Category: BUYSEMPERFI

Smartwatches will still be popular (and fashionable), but instead of just counting reps, they’ll keep close tabs on a wider array of health conditions. New sensors that more accurately monitor blood pressure, glucose levels, and heart rate will feed data into an on-­device AI analysis engine that correlates any irregularities with the historical and real-time health data of family members.

Jennifer Radin, an epidemiologist who has conducted research for Scripps and the Centers for Disease Control, says the data that today’s devices collect lacks detail. In a 2053 world full of cheap and ubiquitous wearables, these devices will not only tell us when we’re getting sick, but data from millions of those wearables will be used to create granular health models of every community, predicting the spread of viruses and allergens and tracking trends on a societal scale. “I hope this empowers the individual to both better understand their own health as well as outbreaks that may be occurring in their community or environmental impacts that are constantly changing,” Radin says.

Alerts will buzz all of your screens and devices whenever your virtual medic discerns it’s time for you to mask up, book a telehealth visit, or request a vax-by-drone appointment. If the news is more serious, we just hope the AI has a good bedside manner. —Boone Ashworth

Disaster Survival

ILLUSTRATION: RICARDO REY

The landscape of 2053 looks like the landscape of today, just more beat up. Forests blackened by fire, rivers muddied by runoff, skies obscured by smoke, and oceans whipped to a frothing violence by a rapidly warming biosphere. Given this grim fate, the technology we use to mitigate the impacts of our own planetary abuse and neglect will surely improve. Wearable air-quality monitors will alert us to the presence of particulate ash, carbon monoxide, mold spores, and pathogens like Covid-51. Our mobile devices will be able to scan food we’re about to eat for traces of microplastics and other potential toxins. Air-filtration masks will be thinner, more breathable, and, thanks to advances in antimicrobial polyester, infinitely reusable.

APS, which installed Blocksi in May, stopped using the filter on most of its devices in August due to its restrictiveness, Harris says, and returned to the GoGuardian filter it used before the switch. Our investigation raises questions about the appropriateness and implementation of GoGuardian’s filter as well.

In May, before the district switched to Blocksi, the GoGuardian filter blocked an 8th grader from searching for “suicide prevention.” It prevented a 3rd grader from searching the word “latina” and a 6th grader from searching “black man.” When an 11th grader Googled “Obergefell v. Hodges ruling,” instead of a list of websites with information about the landmark United States Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage, the student saw a grey screen with APS’s logo and the message: “Restricted. This website has been blocked by your administrator.”

It is difficult to determine who exactly is responsible for a given content restriction. While APS administrators set the network policy for the entire district, individual teachers can also choose what to filter with GoGuardian—including whether to turn off the internet entirely for a particular student or class during a lesson, according to Harris. Outside of school hours, parents can also use the Blocksi and GoGuardian parent apps that APS provides to set their own restrictions on their kids’ school-issued devices.

Blocksi did not respond to multiple requests for comment or answer detailed questions about censorship of APS web activity.

Jeff Gordon, director of public relations for GoGuardian, tells WIRED, “GoGuardian regularly evaluates our website categorization to ensure, to the best of our ability, that legitimate educational sites are accessible to students by default.” He said more than 7,600 school districts use the company’s web filter and referred all questions about whether the blocked activity in Albuquerque was appropriately censored to the district.

Sithara Subramanian, an 11th grader at La Cueva High School, says she began to run into her school’s GoGuardian filter on a regular basis around the time remote learning ended. “It got kind of intense when we went back to school, like educational websites were being blocked,” Subramanian says. The censorship has been particularly frustrating for her biology and anatomy studies. “It felt like they were trying to restrict our education rather than enhance it.”

“My son says the filters make the internet useless,” Sarah Hooten, the mother of Henry, a 13-year-old former APS student, tells WIRED. Henry says that he couldn’t use YouTube to look up information for a report he was assigned about rainforests. “I know it’s partly to do with blocking kids from doing what they aren’t supposed to be doing,” Henry says. “But it’s also just the school not understanding what they are blocking.”

What Went Wrong

The scale of censorship we found in Albuquerque’s schools shows how web filters can twist seemingly simple decisions to block unwanted online content into policies that render the internet near-impossible to use.

In one instance, an APS staff member was unable to view The New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “1619 Project,” a historical exploration of slavery and its consequences in the United States, because of an apparently misguided keyword block in the district’s Blocksi filter. The district’s web-filter blocked websites containing the keyword “avery.” This blocked hundreds of attempts to access the website of a printing company, Avery.com, although APS officials could not explain why “avery” was keyword-blocked. But because the URL for the 1619 Project includes the word “slavery,” it was also blocked. So was a Stanford University lecture about slavery, a Wikipedia map of slavery in the United States, and several articles about a controversial Florida curriculum about slavery.

Lemur Pro is not the best for graphics-intensive tasks like gaming or video editing (see below for some more powerful rigs with dedicated graphics cards), but for everything else, this is one of the nicest laptops you can get.

Dell’s XPS 13 Developer Edition was one of the first big-name laptops to ship with Linux and it remains the lightest, smallest laptop with Linux installed. This configuration sports a 12th-Generation Intel i7-1250U processor, 32 GB of RAM (soldered), and a 1-TB SSD. It ships with Ubuntu Linux 20.04, but in my testing, it will happily run any distro from Fedora to Arch (Dell support applies only to Ubuntu though). When you’re on the product page, make sure you choose Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS as your operating system (it defaults to Windows).

For more details on the hardware, see our review of the Windows version (6/10 WIRED Review). While performance was not great with Windows, I have not found the same to be true using Ubuntu. The main drawback to this machine is the lack of ports. There are two USB-C ports, one of which is your charging port. There isn’t even a headphone jack.

If the Dell’s lack of ports leaves you wanting, this is the laptop for you. System76’s Pangolin (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a 15-inch, AMD-powered monster of a laptop with every port a sysadmin could hope for. This config ships with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U, 32 GB of RAM (soldered), and a 250-GB SSD. You can configure the Pangolin with up to 8 TB of storage.

The battery life is good for the size—it lasts all day in most use cases—but it’s not as good as the Dell. The keyboard, on the other hand, is fantastic and a real pleasure to type on. The one downside is the number pad, which makes the trackpad off-center. The port selection is where the Pangolin really shines. There’s Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port (with DisplayPort support, but not Thunderbolt), three USB-A ports, a 3.5-mm headphone/microphone combo jack, and a full-size SD card reader.

If you want a laptop you can upgrade, Framework’s Laptop is the best Linux rig for you. There are a few flavors available. I tested the second release of the 13-inch model (8/10, WIRED Recommends) and loved it. The Intel Core 13th-Gen series chips with 32 GB of RAM, a 2-TB SSD, and whichever mix of ports suits your needs start for around $1,400. That will ship with no operating system. When it arrives you can install Linux yourself (or opt to ship it with Windows if you need to dual boot). I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but an AMD version is also available. Framework is also taking pre-orders for a new 16-inch model. The 16-inch model is available with an AMD Ryzen 7040 Series processor.

I tested Ubuntu, which Framework supports, and Arch Linux, and both worked great (though Framework does not officially support Arch). My only gripe about using the Framework is my gripe about almost any Linux laptop: battery life could be better.

The System76 Oryx Pro comes in either 15-inch or 17-inch models with 12th-Gen Intel processors and Nvidia graphics (either the 3070 Ti or 3080 Ti GPU). There are options for a glossy, OLED 4K screen, up to 64 GB of RAM, and up to 8 TB of SSD space. It’s not cheap, but the Oryx Pro is by far the most powerful laptop on this page. Like the Pangolin above, the Oryx ships with either System76’s Pop_OS! or Ubuntu Linux. Unlike the Pangolin, the Intel chip in the Oryx Pro means it ships with Coreboot, and open source firmware.

OK, it’s corny, but there’s something about the Lenovo X1 Carbon Linux edition that makes me want to install Kali Linux and start probing the coffee shop Wi-Fi. Whatever the case, this is a slick laptop for those of us who think ThinkPads are, ahem, slick. That slickness comes at a serious price though. For almost double the price of our other picks, you get a 13th-Gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 256-GB SSD (much of this is customizable).

On the plus side, you do get a nice 2K (2,880 x 1,800), OLED, anti-glare screen. I have not had a chance to test this latest model, but I really like the previous release (8/10, WIRED Recommends,) and the new version is primarily a spec bump. It’s frequently on sale for around $1,700.

Photograph: Lenovo

One of the beauties of Linux is that it requires fewer resources and maintains support for older hardware far longer than Windows or macOS. That means you don’t need to spend a fortune on a new laptop; you can breathe life into an old one or grab a used laptop off eBay. I have been doing this for years, working my way through Lenovo’s X-series laptops (starting with an X220, now an T14 Gen 1), but old Dell and Asus laptops are also great for Linux. If you opt to buy used, have a look at our guide to buying used on eBay to make sure you get a good deal.

I like a fancy pair of headphones or a gorgeous TV as much as the next nerd, but these days what really gets me going is European Spa Source’s Eucalyptus Shower Spa Mist…

No, I’m serious. It’s not a new piece of tech, but have you ever wondered why fancy hotel spas smell like the inside of God’s armpit but your bathroom smells like dirty washcloths? It’s this stuff. A few spritzes of spa mist before I hop in the shower, and my entire brain feels like it’s getting a massage while the steam builds up around me.

It really is that good. Pair it with my brand new dual shower head and some nice-smelling soaps, and my entire bathing experience has been overhauled. I highly suggest you give it a try if you value your shower time.

Into the Mist

Shower sprays are nothing new to aromatherapy nuts, but for normies like me they are a revolution. The small bottles come in a variety of sizes and aromas from various brands. My family found this one when my Dad asked a fancy spa he went to in the American Southwest what their special flavor was. The way he gifted everyone in my family a bottle for Christmas last year, it felt like he was like Indiana Jones sharing a relic he found in an ancient temple. I didn’t understand why he was so excited until I tried it.

This particular aroma is one of the most joyous and uplifting scents I’ve ever smelled. The eucalyptus is bright and almost minty when you spray it in a confined space like my small bathroom, with a hint of citrus or lemongrass that lingers in the air. It’s a lovely way to wake up your sinuses (and your outlook) on a dark Portland, Oregon morning.

At this point, when I shower without it (on vacations, at the gym), I genuinely feel like I have a worse day afterward. I’ve started bringing it with me places I can’t fly, like a much lamer Beyoncé with her hot sauce.

I am a reviewer at heart, so I’ve tried a number of recommended shower scent options on Amazon. So far, European Spa Source is the only brand I can trust for the full Armpit Of God effect. None have come close to the brightness and striking cool that comes into my sinuses with a few sprays of European Mist. However, I am interested in trying other scents from the brand; they have one with Lavender that I think I’ll snag when this bottle runs out.

They last a while, though. The $30 price is a lot for something that just smells good, but I have been getting months out of each bottle, even with extra sprays to make my house smell better during off-shower times (I may have a problem). The stuff is also oddly good at cutting off bad scents; you can lean on it after a particularly stinky number two, or when the rest of your house smells like it’s had two dogs snoring in it all day.

It doesn’t have wires, and it can’t play my favorite songs, but pair this with a shower speaker and some Spotify, and this shower spray is easily on my list of Gear of the Year.

A few years ago, the researchers decided to put a superconducting metal called strontium ruthenate in their crosshairs. Its structure is similar to that of a mysterious class of copper-based “cuprate” superconductors, but it can be manufactured in a more pristine way. While the team didn’t learn the secrets of the cuprates, the material responded in a way that Ali Husain, who had refined the technique as part of his doctorate, didn’t understand.

Husain found that ricocheting electrons were sapped of their energy and momentum, which indicated that they were setting off energy-draining ripples in the strontium ruthenate. But the waves defied his expectations: They moved 100 times too quickly to be sound waves (which ripple through atomic nuclei) and 1,000 times too slowly to be charge waves spreading across the flat surface of the metal. They were also extremely low in energy.

“I thought it must be an artifact,” Husain said. So he put in other samples, tried other voltages, and even had different people take the measurements.

The unidentified vibrations remained. After doing the math, the group realized that the energies and momentums of the ripples fit closely with Pines’ theory. The group knew that in strontium ruthenate, electrons travel from atom to atom using one of three distinct channels. The team concluded that in two of these channels, the electrons were syncing up to neutralize each other’s motion, playing the roles of the “heavy” and “light” electrons in Pines’ original analysis. They had found a metal with the ability to host Pines’ demon.

“It’s stable in strontium ruthenate,” Abbamonte said. “It’s always there.”

The ripples don’t perfectly match Pines’ calculations. And Abbamonte and his colleagues can’t guarantee they aren’t seeing a different, more complicated vibration. But overall, other researchers say, the group makes a strong case that Pines’ demon has been caught.

“They have done all the good-faith checks that they can do,” said Sankar Das Sarma, a condensed matter theorist at the University of Maryland who has done pioneering work on demon vibrations.

Demons Unleashed

Now that researchers suspect the demon exists in real metals, some can’t help but wonder whether the motionless motions have any real-world effects. “They shouldn’t be rare, and they might do things,” Abbamonte said.

For instance, sound waves rippling through metallic lattices link electrons in a way that leads to superconductivity, and in 1981, a group of physicists suggested that demon vibrations could conjure superconductivity in a similar way. Abbamonte’s group originally picked strontium ruthenate for its unorthodox superconductivity. Perhaps the demon could be involved.

“Whether or not the demon plays a role is right now unknown,” Kogar said, “but it’s another particle in the game.” (Physicists often think of waves with certain properties as particles.)

But the main novelty of the research lies in spotting the long-anticipated metallic effect. To condensed matter theorists, the finding is a satisfying coda to a 70-year-old story.

“It’s an interesting postscript to the early history of the electron gas,” Coleman said.

And to Husain, who finished his degree in 2020 and now works at the company Quantinuum, the research suggests that metals and other materials are teeming with weird vibrations that physicists lack the instrumentation to understand.

“They’re just sitting there,” he said, “waiting to be discovered.”

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Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

If you were as obsessed with Disney’s Halloweentown as I was as a kid, then you likely have a vivid memory of the bottomless pit that was Aggie Cromwell’s magical purse. I have one scene burned into my memory, which involves her pulling spooky Halloween decorations from it—a toy skeleton at least 3 feet tall, a garlic clove necklace, a giant jar of eyeballs, carved pumpkins, and a bunch of costumes. “This bag defies logic!” Aggie’s grandson yelled in amazement, “How does all this stuff fit in here?!”

I ask myself the same thing about Baggu’s Crescent Bag every day. It went viral on TikTok for how unexpectedly roomy the somewhat small bag is on the inside. Using the “What’s In My Bag?” format (a trend where content creators show off what they carry daily), people have been showcasing the obscene amount of stuff they can pack into their Baggu. The results were hard to believe.

These TikToks were appearing on my For You page just as I got tired of carrying all my stuff. None of my purses seemed to work, so I resorted to shoving everything in my jacket pockets or carrying things in my hands. I wanted a bag that checked off all the boxes: big, but not too big, stylish but minimalist, comfortable to wear for long periods, and affordable. The minute I slung the Baggu over my shoulder, I knew it was a match made in handbag heaven.

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Customization Station

Based on style alone, the Baggu wouldn’t have initially caught my eye. It’s not glossy or sparkly, and there aren’t fancy buckles or clasps. Made of recycled heavyweight nylon on the outside with a recycled ripstop lining, it has a more rugged look and feel to it.

The solid color options look fairly plain too. While I’d typically go right for the Cross Stitch print, I decided to go for the black color for two reasons: I wanted a bag that I could easily match with my outfits, and I was heavily influenced by how people were decorating their solid-colored Baggus. While some TikTok videos proved how much stuff can be crammed into this bag, others showed off how fun it is to accessorize with keychains, patches, pins, ribbons, and more.

I haven’t gotten around to adding any cute pins or patches to mine. (I prefer to collect them organically—while on a trip, for example—so there’s more meaning behind each one.) I did, however, clip this Amuseable Coffee-to-Go Bag Charm from JellyCat onto it. I purchased it after going down a rabbit hole of Baggu TikToks and stumbling upon a viral video of someone who added the same keychain to theirs.

It’s a minor addition, but it does make a huge difference. It showcases my personality a bit and brightens my mood every time I look at the adorable little coffee cup. But having a blank canvas to decorate feels exciting. It allows me to transform my Baggu into a one-of-a-kind piece, which is important when it feels like everyone has one of everything these days.

As a PC gamer, you’ve likely already felt the pain that is the ever-increasing file size of today’s games—Baldur’s Gate 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 are each around 150 gigabytes, for example. These giant games become even more of a hassle on portable consoles like Valve’s Steam Deck.

Huge file sizes don’t have to be an annoyance, however. Whether you opted for the 64, 256, or 512 GB versions of Valve’s handheld gaming computer, or are considering getting the new Steam Deck OLED in either the 512 GB or 1 TB configuration, the solid-state drive inside the console is upgradeable. By adding a larger capacity drive to the Steam Deck’s internal SSD slot, you can spend less time swapping out microSD cards and games and more time actually playing them.

Installing a new M.2 SSD in the Steam Deck isn’t too hard, but if you’re not a do-it-yourself PC person, you may find it challenging (especially for the OLED model). We’re here to guide you step-by-step through the process—for both the original Deck and the OLED edition. Trust us, it’s worth the effort.

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Step 1: Pick a Compatible Drive and Prep Your Deck

Before you purchase an SSD, you’ll want to make sure it’s compatible with your Steam Deck. Both models take the 2230 version of the M.2 NVMe SSD, which is its most compact form factor—perfect for fitting in the confined spaces of the Steam Deck’s internals.

For this guide, I’m using the WD_BLACK SN770M NVMe™ SSD, which comes in 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB storage capacities. To keep your new SSD cool and running optimally, you’ll also want to get a heat sink. I opted for this copper option with thermal pads, which also comes with all of the tools you’ll need to install the SSD in the original Steam Deck. If you have the OLED, you’ll also need to get a star screwdriver (like the T6 in this multitool option) to remove the screws on the back panel and internally. Once you’ve installed the new SSD, you’ll need to load it with the proper software, which requires some additional hardware like a computer, a flash drive, a wired keyboard, and a USB hub.

Before you start taking your Deck apart, make sure the space you’re using is well lit and ideally clean of anything like dust and pet hair. Then, check to see if it’s running the latest software by going to Settings > System > Software Updates and hitting the Check For Updates button. Update the device, then shut it down.

If you have a microSD card in the slot, remove this before you continue. Then, to save your joysticks and prevent your console from moving around while you work, I recommend placing your Steam Deck upside-down in its case.

And you don’t need anything special to create a QR code. The tools are widely available and straightforward to use, and putting together a QR code of your own isn’t much more difficult than scanning one. If you wanted to create a QR code that points to a website that’s been put together for malicious purposes, it would only take a couple of minutes. The QR code could then be stuck on a wall, attached to an email, or printed on a document, ready to be scanned.

The aims of these websites are the same as they’ve always been: to get you to download something that will compromise the security of your accounts or your devices, or to get you to enter some login credentials that will then be relayed straight to the hackers (most probably using a spoof site set up to look like something genuine and trustworthy). The intended end results are the same as ever, but the method of getting there is different.

Avoiding QR Code Hacks

The security precautions you should already be using are the same ones that will keep you protected against QR code hacking. Just as you would with emails or instant messages, don’t trust QR codes if you’re not sure where they’ve come from—perhaps attached to suspicious-looking emails or on websites that you can’t verify. The QR code on the menu in your local restaurant, in contrast, is highly unlikely to have been generated by hackers.

Of course, there’s always the chance that the accounts of your friends, family, and colleagues have been compromised, so you can never be 100 percent sure that a message with a QR code in it is genuine. Scams will usually try to imply a sense of urgency and alarm: Scan this QR code to verify your identity or prevent the deletion of your account or take advantage of a time-limited offer.

You should get a preview of the link you’re visiting from a QR code.

Apple via David Nield

As always, your digital accounts should be as heavily protected as possible, so that if you do fall victim to a QR code trick, safety nets are in place. Switch on two-factor authentication for every account that offers it, make sure your personal details are up to date (such as backup email addresses and phone numbers that can be used to recover your accounts), and log out of devices you’re no longer using (you should also delete old accounts you no longer have any need for).

Finally, keep your software up to date—something that’s happily now very easy to do. The latest versions of popular mobile web browsers come with built-in tech for spotting fraudulent links: These integrated protections aren’t infallible, but the more up-to-date your browser and mobile OS are, the better your chances of getting a warning on screen if you’re about to visit an unsafe location on the web.

Rain at one point has claimed to investors that it has held advanced talks to sell systems to Google, Oracle, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. Microsoft declined to comment, and the other companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Security Fears

The funding round led by Prosperity7 announced last year brought Rain’s total funding to $33 million as of April 2022. That was enough to operate through early 2025 and valued the company at $90 million excluding the new cash raised, according to the disclosures to investors. The documents cited Altman’s personal investment and Rain’s letter of intent with OpenAI as reasons to back the company.

In a Rain press release for the fundraise last year, Altman applauded the startup for taping out a prototype in 2021 and said it “could vastly reduce the costs of creating powerful AI models and will hopefully one day help to enable true artificial general intelligence.”

Prosperity7’s investment in Rain drew the interest of the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which has the power to scuttle deals deemed to threaten national security.

CFIUS, as the committee is known, has long been concerned about China gaining access to advanced US semiconductors, and has grown increasingly worried about China using intermediaries in the Middle East to quietly learn more about critical technology, says Nevena Simidjiyska, a partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild who helps clients with CFIUS reviews. “The government doesn’t care about the money,” she says. “It cares about access and control and the power of the foreign party.”

Rain received a small seed investment from the venture unit of Chinese search engine Baidu apparently without problems but the larger Saudi investment attracted significant concerns. Prosperity7, a unit of Aramco Ventures, which is part of state-owned Saudi Aramco, possibly could have let the oil giant and other large companies in the Middle East to become customers but also put Rain into close contact with the Saudi government.

Megan Apper, a spokesperson for CFIUS, says the panel is “committed to taking all necessary actions within its authority to safeguard U.S. national security” but that “consistent with law and practice, CFIUS does not publicly comment on transactions that it may or may not be reviewing.”

Data disclosed by CFIUS shows it reviews hundreds of deals annually and in the few cases where it has concerns typically works out safeguards, such as barring a foreign investor from taking a board seat. It couldn’t be learned why the committee required full divestment from Rain.

Three attorneys who regularly work on sensitive deals say they could not recall any previous Saudi Arabian deals fully blocked by CFIUS. “Divestment itself has been quite rare over the past 20 years and has largely been a remedy reserved for Chinese investors,” says Luciano Racco, cochair of the international trade and national security practice at law firm Foley Hoag.

OpenAI likely needs to find partners with deep-pocketed backers if it is to gain some control over its hardware needs. Competitors Amazon and Google have spent years developing their own custom chips for AI projects and can fund them with revenue from their lucrative core businesses. Altman has refused to rule out OpenAI making its own chips, but that too would require significant funding.

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment on the researchers’ findings. When we tried the “repeat ‘poem’ forever” and “repeat ‘book’ forever” prompts ourselves, they didn’t produce training data but instead threw up flags for a potential violation of ChatGPT’s terms of use, suggesting at least some instances of the problem may have been fixed.

In a sprawling bust that spanned multiple Ukrainian cities, at least five key members of a ransomware gang were arrested this week in raids coordinated by Europol along with law enforcement agents from Ukraine, the US, Canada, the Netherlands, and other European countries. The group’s members are accused of deploying multiple ransomware variants including LockerGoga, Hive, MegaCortex, and Dharma. According to Ukrainian police, the gang allegedly did at least $82 million in damage in attacks that encrypted more than a thousand servers on victim networks over the past five years.

In a very different sort of Ukrainian criminal case, Ukrainian law enforcement this week detained Viktor Zhora, the deputy director of the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine, its agency focused on cybersecurity. Zhora, along with the agency’s director, is accused of taking part in a multimillion-dollar corruption scheme. While corruption has long plagued the Ukrainian government and military, the charges against Zhora—and his detainment this week—have sent shock waves through the global cybersecurity community, in which Zhora was a high-profile figure and often the public face of Ukraine’s cybersecurity defense. In November, for instance, Zhora keynoted the popular Cyberwarcon conference of security researchers in Arlington, Virginia. Zhora was released on bail later in the week. When his charges were announced, he told TechCrunch that he would “defend [his] name and reputation in a court.”

In keeping with this week’s theme of (alleged) crime and punishment, David Vincenzetti, the founder of hacker-for-hire firm Hacking Team, was arrested last weekend for the alleged stabbing and attempted murder of a family member, TechCrunch reported based on news articles in multiple Italian-language media outlets. According to one of those newspapers, Il Giorno, the victim was visiting Vincenzetti to take care of him due to his psychological issues. When Vincenzetti appeared before a judge, he reportedly gave a rambling statement that caused a judge to ask prosecutors to investigate his mental health, according to La Stampa. The reported charge could suggest a dark ending to the story of a man with a dark career, who helped launch an industry of cyber-mercenaries like NSO Group, Appin, CyberRoot, and BellTroX.