A cloud architect discovered that their personal AWS account was breached when they received a DKIM verification email. They then removed the attacker's access and found that the attacker had created four IAM accounts for backdoor access, launched a large EC2 instance (possibly for cryptomining), created an AWS Organization and a new account, and used Resource Explorer to search for additional access. The post walks the reader through the author's full process, from discovery to incident response to root cause analysis.
Ransomware gangs thrive through automation, customization, and advanced tools, rapidly evolving their tactics to outpace defenders. AI accelerates attacks and facilitates phishing, while tailored ransomware operations employ strong encryption and sophisticated extortion tactics. These groups operate like efficient SaaS enterprises, and the recommendation is to focus on defense against attacker techniques and fast, automated responses.
A ransomware-infected VS Code extension, "susvsex," was found on the Visual Studio Marketplace. It utilizes GitHub for command and control, encrypts files, and uploads them for extortion, but its malicious intent was clearly evident. Due to poor coding and a hardcoded decryption key, its threat is currently low. The incident highlights gaps in extension security.
Collapse the security stack into one tool AI-powered tool that automates security response, policy enforcement (apps, users, devices), and compliance evidence. Trusted by the world's
Microsoft has revealed a new attack, called Whisper Leak, that enables attackers to infer the topics of AI chat conversations by analyzing encrypted network traffic patterns, even without accessing the actual data.
QNAP has released fixes for seven zero-day vulnerabilities discovered by Pwn2Own Ireland researchers in its QTS, QuTS Hero, Hyper Data Protector, Malware Remover, and HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync software.
Your gut instinct will only get you so far in 2026. To surface in search, deliver instant service, and use high-velocity tactics, you need a social toolkit [5] — and that's what SPROUT SOCIAL, ZENDESK, NEWSWHIP, and OPAL have joined forces to deliver.
Meta earns billions from scam ads. 10% of its 2024 revenue (about $16 billion) was tied to fraudulent or banned ads. Users see 15B high-risk scam ads daily, and many suspicious advertisers remain active unless fraud is nearly certain, sometimes paying higher rates instead of being banned. Lenient policies, algorithmic amplification, and high-value accounts worsen the problem. Meta plans to gradually reduce this through measures like penalty bids.
Brands are revisiting their archives to recreate past campaigns for today's audiences. They're leaning on nostalgia and existing fandoms to reconnect with consumers. Gushers turned its '90s “Fruitheads” ad into a short horror film, Pringles updated its “Once You Pop” tagline, Columbia Sportswear drew on early extreme-product-testing spots, and Acuvue partnered with a creator to revive a mid-2000s campaign. The key is modernizing the work so it feels relevant rather than dated.
Draft an annual marketing plan by addressing 3 core questions about growth strategy, budget, and revenue targets. Choose 3-5 strategic “big bets” and document each with a GACCS Brief for clarity. Estimate a budget range using GTM efficiency metrics such as CAC ratio, payback period, or LTV to CAC. Validate revenue targets with a bottom-up forecast using realistic conversion rates and lead or account data to ensure top-down goals are achievable.
For a strong OOH campaign, target locations where your customers live, work, and commute. Use multiple formats like billboards, panels, transit ads, street furniture, and digital boards. Plan 3-6 months ahead and align stakeholders. Keep the messaging simple and easy to read. Focus on peak engagement periods and map audience hotspots. Repeat consistent messaging across all placements to create a memorable brand presence.
Google's new “visual search fan-out” uses AI to analyze image details and generate related search queries, expanding SEO beyond keywords. A custom Screaming Frog tool powered by OpenAI's Vision API mimics this process, revealing missed optimization opportunities by detecting overlooked objects, styles, and attributes. Tests show many e-commerce images lack context for visual elements like color, material, or use case, limiting visibility. Adding these insights to alt text, descriptions, and on-page content can boost search reach.
Google's PMax update introduces asset-level reporting, providing visibility into which headlines, images, and videos drive clicks and conversions. Advertisers can now identify top performers and replace underperforming creatives without resetting campaign learning. Alongside this update, built-in AI video tools allow teams to auto-generate short-form videos from existing brand assets. This allows broader reach across placements like YouTube and Display without requiring in-house production.
Evergreen marketing provides steady revenue and long-term growth, while launches generate quick cash and market momentum. Evergreen works best for consistent offers like SaaS, retainers, or memberships. Launches suit timed products such as bootcamps, cohorts, or drops, offering fast visibility but higher risk. Combining both by running evergreen systems for predictable revenue and adding 3-4 launches per year creates urgency and drives new demand.
The “attention equation” shows that monetization depends more on focus quality than time spent. Mobile games and premium video drive strong engagement but are underused due to weak ad formats. Social video on TikTok and YouTube delivers high satisfaction even when watched alone. Matching content to user intent and channel behavior leads to better results than prioritizing screen time.
Tesla shareholders have voted to approve a plan to motivate Elon Musk with a bonus of as much as $1 trillion in additional stock. Musk had threatened on social media to leave the company if the measure was rejected. He claimed he wanted a big enough ownership stake in Tesla so that he couldn't be fired, so the 'robot army' he is developing doesn't fall into the wrong hands. The new pay package includes 12 chunks of stock that could give Musk control of as much as 25% of Tesla if he hits a series of milestones in the next decade.
Google's latest generation of Ironwood accelerators will become generally available in the coming weeks. The TPU v7 accelerators are a major leap in performance over prior generations. They offer performance close to Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs, when normalizing floating point perf to the same precision. The TPUs can be scaled into truly enormous compute domains - Google is offering the chips in pods of 256 up to 9,216.
The UAE's Emirate Genome Programme started six years ago with the goal of mapping the genetic code of all of the nation's around one million citizens. The country believes that gene sequencing is both a public-health project and a key part of the country's multitrillion-dollar effort to refashion itself from a petrostate into an AI powerhouse. The project has already collected DNA samples from more than 750,000 Emirates. Efforts to pair AI with genomic data have yet to yield profitable drugs, but many believe they will soon.
'Mind captioning' is a method developed at NTT Communication Science Laboratories in Japan that uses a blend of brain images and AI to generate text descriptions of what people are seeing (or even visualizing) based only on their neural patterns. In tests, the system was able to correctly describe scenes viewed by participants about half the time, even when presented with a hundred possibilities - and even when participants were just visualizing the scenes in their mind. The technology is still far from being a mind-reading device, but it could have serious ethical implications when it becomes more capable.
Some concepts are easy to grasp in the abstract, but others you really need to try before you understand them. Regardless of whether or not LLM agents are snake oil or not, it's worth learning how to make one - startups are raising millions building agents at a time when nobody really knows anything yet. It's easy to get started. This post walks readers through how to create an agent.
As large language models become more dominant, new frameworks will find it hard to gain traction because the models won't have enough training data about them. The industry needs to innovate and build new frameworks, libraries, and platform features to push the web forward and create competition. Developers need to have clear strategies to get their work into the LLM training corpus, system prompts, and developer minds. If the industry continues its current focus on maintainability and developer experience, we'll end up in a world where the web is built by LLMs using only what is entrenched in the training data.
This post presents a deconstructive view on how games are designed. It presents twelve aspects of game design to help readers get better at making games of any type. Each of the topics is deep, and there are plenty of links for further reading. The fun of making games is always right outside the edge of what the designers know.
61% of customers leave after one bad service moment. Discover how leading brands pair agent empathy with AI efficiency to deliver smarter, more trusted customer experiences. Read the ungated insight
Microsoft's new MAI Superintelligence Team, led by Mustafa Suleyman, will put human interests and guardrails first, creating systems that are aligned to human values by default.
Advice on making Android notifications perfectly reliable from a developer with years of real-world experience building apps with zero notification failure reports.
The next evolution in AI isn't better chat, it's agents that can actually do things: query databases, update systems, and make decisions. But connecting AI to every tool means custom code for each integration.
Sam Altman revealed OpenAI's annual revenue run rate surpassed $20B, with future infrastructure commitments reaching $1.4 trillion. Plans include enterprise offerings, AI cloud services, and ventures into consumer devices and scientific discovery.
GPT-5.1 Thinking has been spotted in a backend component responsible for powering advanced reasoning processes within ChatGPT, indicating a GPT-5.1 release is close. Rumors point to a lineup of three models (Mini, Thinking, and a possible Codex-focused upgrade), each designed to fit different user needs and compute constraints. OpenAI is likely aiming to synchronize the release with Google's upcoming Gemini 3 Pro launch.
Google plans to invest even more money into Anthropic. It is now in talks for a new funding round that could value Anthropic at $350 billion. The new deal could involve Google providing additional cloud computing services to Anthropic, a convertible note, or a priced funding round early next year. Google last month announced that it had inked a deal worth tens of billions for Anthropic to access Google's AI compute.