Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1706) — hint #1 — Vowels

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1706) — hint #2 — repeated letters

Quordle today (game #1706) — hint #3 — uncommon letters

Quordle today (game #1706) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1706) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1706) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1706, are…

• SNORT
• BIBLE
• LAPSE
• CRANE

I had one of those moments here where I was absolutely certain I would be seeing the bouncy letters that mean you have completed the game.

Aptly, however, my guess of “false” turned out to be completely wrong.

Fortunately, I had space for a mistake.

Daily Sequence today (game #1706) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1706, are…

• GLEAM
• GOUGE
• DWELL
• ROGUE

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1705, Friday, 25 September: SWEAR, FLOOD, GUPPY, GROAN
• Quordle #1704, Thursday, 24 September: TOPIC, METRO, SCALP, FREED
• Quordle #1703, Wednesday, 23 September: SHEET, BLAND, JOIST, GUAVA
• Quordle #1702, Tuesday, 22 September: COMFY, LOBBY, DRESS, PANEL
• Quordle #1701, Monday, 21 September: WAXEN, HIPPO, PETAL, LEASH
• Quordle #1700, Sunday, 20 September: DERBY, LIMBO, GAWKY, REIGN
• Quordle #1699, Saturday, 19 September: SCOPE, HEIST, PULSE, CHAMP
• Quordle #1698, Friday, 18 September: MUCUS, MIRTH, APPLE, TILDE
• Quordle #1697, Thursday, 17 September: CRIER, CHIRP, NEIGH, FREER
• Quordle #1696, Wednesday, 16 September: SPEAR, PRICE, BLUNT, FISHY
• Quordle #1695, Tuesday, 15 September: SHUSH, LITHE, DELTA, BUGLE
• Quordle #1694, Monday, 14 September: ZEBRA, LEGAL, RATIO, TROLL
• Quordle #1693, Sunday, 13 September: LUCID, SPRAY, MANGE, EMAIL
• Quordle #1692, Saturday, 12 September: SUPER, BRUSH, RESET, SOWER
• Quordle #1691, Friday, 11 September: PLUSH, PAINT, RIVAL, AFOUL
• Quordle #1690, Thursday, 10 September: AGENT, EXILE, TITAN, PUREE
• Quordle #1689, Wednesday, 9 September: HAPPY, GONER, SMACK, MOTIF
• Quordle #1688, Tuesday, 8 September: FLUNG, DIARY, HALVE, BERTH
• Quordle #1687, Monday, 7 September: VISIT, CLANK, FEVER, OCEAN
• Quordle #1686, Sunday, 6 September: PILOT, HONOR, BOWEL, TAUNT

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #937) - hint #1 - today's theme

NYT Strands today (game #937) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• CURE
• FEEL
• PREY
• BREW
• DICE
• SWIFT

NYT Strands today (game #937) - hint #3 - spangram letters

NYT Strands today (game #937) - hint #4 - spangram position

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #937) - the answers

The answers to today's Strands, game #937, are…

• BREEZE
• ZEPHYR
• GUST
• WHIFF
• PUFF
• FLURRY
• CURRENT
• SPANGRAM: GENTLEWIND

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

I began, as I’m sure most players did, by finding the words linked to the two letter Zs.

However, while BREEZE was a breeze, ZEPHYR was not something I would have got without the fact that its letters connected straight down.

ZEPHYR is, like all of today’s game words, a way of describing a GENTLEWIND — but prior to today its only appearance in my life was in The Zephyr Song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which seemed to imply it was some kind of magical vehicle we could fly away on.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Friday, September 25, game #936)

• NINE
• TWENTYFIVE
• FOUR
• EIGHTYONE
• THIRTYSIX
• SPANGRAM: SQUARENUMBER

Samsung is behind some of our favorite portable SSDs, with the T7 being an excellent example. This incredibly versatile 1TB drive combines USB 3.2 Gen 2 connectivity with a durable aluminum enclosure.

• Best for: Professionals, students, photographers, and creators who need fast, compact external storage that can easily switch between modern devices.

• The deal: The Samsung T7 1TB SSD is now $230 (was $275) at Amazon.

• Why it matters: Samsung has consistently delivered an excellent range of portable SSDs. The T7 is a real classic of the range - compact, durable, and speedy enough for most users. It delivers read speeds up to 1,050MB/s and writes speeds up to 1,000MB/s, making large file transfers considerably quicker than with portable hard drives.

Today's best Samsung portable SSD deal

Why we recommend it

The T7 uses NVMe storage and USB 3.2 Gen 2 to deliver sequential read speeds of up to 1,050MB/s and writes of up to 1,000MB/s. Samsung supports recording compatible high-resolution video directly to the T7, including ProRes 4K at 60fps from supported iPhones. The aluminum drive measures just 3.3 x 2.2 x 0.3 inches, weighs around 2.1oz and is designed to withstand drops of up to six feet.

Price context & historical value

The reduction from $274.99 to $229.99 will save you 16%. That's a welcome price cut in 2026, but it's still expensive for a 1TB external SSD by historical standards. In 2023, before component prices began sky-rocketing, it was available to buy for just $64.99. I don't expect to see it that low again for a very long time, if ever.

For more shopping options, take a look at our roundup of the best portable SSDs, and the fastest external SSDs.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the Samsung T7 Portable SSD if...

You frequently move large files between devices and need something faster than a hard drive. The T7 supports 256-bit AES hardware encryption, which is useful if you'll be carrying important work or personal files about with you.

❌ Skip the Samsung T7 Portable SSD if...

Your priority is getting as much storage as possible for the money. You're paying a premium for the T7's combination of SSD performance, compact dimensions and portability, and a slower external drive will give you much more space for the same money, or probably even less.

Also consider

• Shop all portable SSDs at Amazon.

• Kaspersky uncovers MacSync, a Mac infostealer delivered via iCloud calendar events and fake apps
• Loader fetches instructions from calendar entries, then deploys malware exfiltrating credentials, wallets, and developer data
• Newer variants add Objective‑C backdoor spoofing Finder, persistence, and expanded targeting of crypto and IT users

Cybercriminals have found a way to use iCloud calendar events and cloud storage to deliver a powerful infostealer to Mac devices.

The malware is called MacSync, and it’s hiding behind fake crypto wallets, or “cracked” commercial software.

Security researchers Kaspersky, who discovered the ongoing campaign, are urging Mac users to exercise caution when downloading programs, especially from third-party websites, and to be very skeptical of apps prompting for their admin password.

Why calendar?

Getting people to download and run malware on their devices is not as easy as it sounds.

The victims need to be somehow tricked into downloading and running an app, and even when they do so, chances are the malicious program will be sniffed out by whatever antivirus solutions the device has running, before it can do any meaningful damage. Also, crooks don’t want to be forced to repeat the process every time they want to deploy a different variant, or type of malware.

So, they resort to all sorts of techniques and workarounds, from DLL sideloading, to malware loaders.

By separating the initial infection and the actual malware, cybercriminals can reduce detection rate and get more flexibility, but it creates a new problem: defenders can monitor the traffic going in and out of different apps and thus detect when a loader is deploying malware.

The challenge then becomes hiding the traffic, and MacSync does it by using the iCloud calendar.

After being downloaded and executed, the loader will reach out to the calendar - which is a totally benign activity that is unlikely to raise any suspicion - and look for a specific public event, pre-built by the attackers. In its description, it will find the instructions, and the location of, the actual infostealer, and deploy it to ultimately compromise the target device. In this case, the location was also in the iCloud.

The loader itself is being advertised through social media, SEO poisoning, and phishing. Victims are directed either to fraudulent websites or social media channels promoting cracked software, or free versions of advanced solutions. In at least one example, Kaspersky saw the loader being advertised as a cryptocurrency wallet. Victims are shown a typical ClickFix error, and told to fix it by pasting a command in the Terminal.

The command deploys the loader which, in turn, installs MacSync.

A "substantial" overhaul

The infostealer emerged in April 2025, and was initially spun out of AMOS, one of the most popular information-stealing variants for the MacOS. It is based on Swift and has, since then, evolved to offer additional capabilities. According to Kaspersky, it can exfiltrate browser history, cookies, saved credentials, cryptocurrency wallet and app data, Telegram data, Keychain data, as well as system and device information. It can exfiltrate SSH, AWS, Kubernetes, Git, and shell configuration files, as well.

Newer variants come with an Objective-C backdoor spoofing the macOS default file manager, Finder. It establishes persistence, terminates notification processes to prevent alerts, and grants the attackers backdoor access, including running AppleScript received from the C2 server, deploying browser extensions, replacing the legitimate Ledger wallet app, collecting additional system information, and more.

Kaspersky also found an undefined command called “live_browser”, which downloads and runs a component named “sn_relay”, whose point has not yet been established.

The new versions “significantly” differ from older ones, Kaspersky said, stressing that the attackers “substantially” overhauled their approach.

“The nature of the data attackers seek to collect from a victim’s device, as well as the categories of applications the stealer disguises itself as, clearly indicates that this malware family primarily targets developers, crypto enthusiasts, and other users associated in some way with IT and the crypto space,” the researchers stressed. “MacSync’s compromise of software developers’ devices poses particular security risks for both end users and corporate systems, opening up expanded opportunities for attackers to further their intrusion.”

The full list of indicators of compromise (IoC) can be found on this link.

• Logitech G has released a new gaming mouse
• The Pro X3 Superstrike is an upgraded version of the Pro X2 Superstrike from earlier this year
• Major upgrades include better weight distribution and a new chipset for better power efficiency

PC gaming accessory maker Logitech G has just released the Pro X3 Superstrike, an upgraded version of the Pro X2 Superstrike that came out earlier this year.

We called the original model a 'revolutionary' innovation in our 5-star review, praising its unique Haptic Inductive Trigger System (HITS) switches. Relying on electromagnetic current, HITS allows you to customize everything from the exact actuation point of each click to just how much resistance there is when you press down.

This is a boon in an esports setting, where a short click speed can cut down click latency and, potentially, provide an edge over your opponents.

The upgrades found with the Pro X3 Superstrike are subtle, as you might expect given the short time between the two releases, but serve to make an already best-in-class product that little bit better.

It weighs the same 61g as the X2 model, but has been reworked internally for more even weight distribution. This, the team behind the mouse tells me, is the direct result of feedback given by esports pros who complained the original was too front-heavy.

Under the hood, it's also powered by a new chipset, dubbed the NxLOGI. Power efficiency was a major focus, with Logitech claiming that the X3 Superstrike can last more than 135 hours on each charge for a massive 45-hour boost compared to the X2.

There's an upgraded sensor too, which supports up to 48,000 DPI (compared to the 44,000 DPI of the previous model). Other flagship specs, like an up to 8,000Hz wireless report rate, remain unchanged — though there's now the option to achieve that when using the mouse in a wired capacity too.

Interestingly, there are some new features on the software side: you can now choose a range of Pro Presets in the compatible Logitech G Hub app, all inspired by the settings used by esports players like m0NESY or ShowMaker.

The result is a mouse that's clearly the better pick if you're weighing up the two, but all of this does with a price hike in the US and UK. The X3 Superstrike retails for $199.99 / £169.99 / AU$299.95. That's $20 / £10 more than the X2 (though, weirdly, the Australian price remains the same).

A Logitech representative did tell me that the X2 Superstrike will remain on sale alongside the X3 Superstrike for a time as an alternative for those who want something a little cheaper.

• Graz University researchers found decades‑old flaws in file‑notification subsystems across Linux, Windows, macOS, and Android
• Side‑channel attacks can infer keystrokes, visited websites, or even steal credentials via unprivileged access
• Linux shipped partial mitigations (CVE‑2025‑68788); Microsoft and Apple acknowledged but did not patch, demo expected at ACM CCS 2026

Researchers have found a vulnerability in all major operating systems which could, in certain scenarios, allow threat actors to steal login credentials, or track which websites the target is visiting. OS makers, on the other hand, don’t seem all too phased about it.

The bug is described as a side-channel attack - a type of attack in which threat actors simply observe how the system operates and extract valuable secrets through indirect clues. For example, by monitoring how much power the chip takes at any given moment in time, attackers can observe and extract passwords.

It was discovered by security researchers from Austria’s Graz University of Technology: Sudheendra Raghav Neela, Xufan Zhao, Jeanette Angelika Wultsch, Hannes Weissteiner, Florian Draschbacher, Stefan Gast, and Daniel Gruss.

Notifying the system

This particular side-channel vulnerability was found in the file-notification subsystem running in pretty much every OS in existence today. The subsystem is built to notify applications when files on a system change. Not what has changed, just that a change occurred. The bug is allegedly quite old, too.

"We found decades-old bugs on [these operating systems], all rooted in the file-notification subsystems that every modern OS ships to inform applications when files change," said Sudheendra Raghav Neela, a doctoral student at TU Graz, in an email to The Register.

On Linux, the subsystem is called inotify and it’s been affected since 2005. On Android it’s FileObserver (affected since 2008), and on Windows - ReadDirectoryChangesW - flawed since the year 2000. On MacOS, it’s called FSEvents, vulnerable since 2007.

In the paper, the researchers claim file event information can help attackers conclude what other users on a computer are doing. They can launch an inter-keystroke-timing attack, inferring what users are inputting (both locally and remotely), reveal which websites they visit, and possibly even steal login credentials through UI redress.

The problem stems from the fact that unprivileged users are allowed to access the file notification subsystem. This primarily relates to files that can be read by multiple users, but apparently, there are quite a few files on a system that fall into that category.

No patch

"On Linux, watching a readable directory leaks events on files inside it you cannot even read: watching /dev/input gives a notification on every keystroke, which we turn into a local inter-keystroke timing attack with a 93.1–100% [keystroke accuracy] score across seven users and a remote (SSH) one at 100%,” Neela said.

The percentage range means the attack won’t work in all cases, which is more-or-less standard with side-channel attacks. They are notoriously difficult to pull off, which is also likely why most OS makers barely flinched at the news.

All of them were notified of the findings roughly a year ago, and most of them never bothered to address it. Linux introduced some mitigations, including CVE-2025-68788, which prevents inotify from generating certain “access” and “modify” events for special files. The fix was shipped to multiple kernels and Linux distros, but it addresses only part of the broader attack techniques that the researchers described.

Microsoft and Apple apparently acknowledged the findings, but apart from that - did very little. Microsoft told the researchers the behavior of ReadDirectoryChangesW was "by-design", although the feature is undocumented. They believe the ability to monitor file paths across users is not a vulnerability worthy of a patch. The report does not mention Apple doing anything about it, either.

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1705) — hint #1 — Vowels

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1705) — hint #2 — repeated letters

Quordle today (game #1705) — hint #3 — uncommon letters

Quordle today (game #1705) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1705) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1705) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1705, are…

• SWEAR
• FLOOD
• GUPPY
• GROAN

A close call today.

Even though I only had nine letters left — and four of them were J,Q, X and Z — I still made very hard work of getting GUPPY. In my defense, though, “gummy” is a far more likely word, isn't it?

Daily Sequence today (game #1705) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1705, are…

• CAROL
• RAVEN
• PARER
• PERKY

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1704, Thursday, 24 September: TOPIC, METRO, SCALP, FREED
• Quordle #1703, Wednesday, 23 September: SHEET, BLAND, JOIST, GUAVA
• Quordle #1702, Tuesday, 22 September: COMFY, LOBBY, DRESS, PANEL
• Quordle #1701, Monday, 21 September: WAXEN, HIPPO, PETAL, LEASH
• Quordle #1700, Sunday, 20 September: DERBY, LIMBO, GAWKY, REIGN
• Quordle #1699, Saturday, 19 September: SCOPE, HEIST, PULSE, CHAMP
• Quordle #1698, Friday, 18 September: MUCUS, MIRTH, APPLE, TILDE
• Quordle #1697, Thursday, 17 September: CRIER, CHIRP, NEIGH, FREER
• Quordle #1696, Wednesday, 16 September: SPEAR, PRICE, BLUNT, FISHY
• Quordle #1695, Tuesday, 15 September: SHUSH, LITHE, DELTA, BUGLE
• Quordle #1694, Monday, 14 September: ZEBRA, LEGAL, RATIO, TROLL
• Quordle #1693, Sunday, 13 September: LUCID, SPRAY, MANGE, EMAIL
• Quordle #1692, Saturday, 12 September: SUPER, BRUSH, RESET, SOWER
• Quordle #1691, Friday, 11 September: PLUSH, PAINT, RIVAL, AFOUL
• Quordle #1690, Thursday, 10 September: AGENT, EXILE, TITAN, PUREE
• Quordle #1689, Wednesday, 9 September: HAPPY, GONER, SMACK, MOTIF
• Quordle #1688, Tuesday, 8 September: FLUNG, DIARY, HALVE, BERTH
• Quordle #1687, Monday, 7 September: VISIT, CLANK, FEVER, OCEAN
• Quordle #1686, Sunday, 6 September: PILOT, HONOR, BOWEL, TAUNT
• Quordle #1685, Saturday, 5 September: GNASH, GEEKY, WHELP, PUTTY

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #936) - hint #1 - today's theme

NYT Strands today (game #936) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• BEST
• REST
• FARE
• BARE
• THEY
• STIR

NYT Strands today (game #936) - hint #3 - spangram letters

NYT Strands today (game #936) - hint #4 - spangram position

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #936) - the answers

The answers to today's Strands, game #936, are…

• NINE
• TWENTYFIVE
• FOUR
• EIGHTYONE
• THIRTYSIX
• SPANGRAM: SQUARENUMBER

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

Is it just me or is this game missing a few words?

We have FOUR, which is the SQUARENUMBER of two, and NINE (the square of three), but then we miss sixteen (the square of four) before jumping back in again with TWENTYFIVE (the square of five) and THIRTYSIX (the square of six). However, we then skip seven and eight, before resuming with EIGHTYONE, the square of nine.

Maybe I'm overthinking this…

Anyway, this quibble aside, the hardest aspect of this game was trying to find the non-game words for this column. There really were barely any, so I hope you didn’t need hints.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Thursday, September 24, game #935)

• SANDBOX
• TREEHOUSE
• SWINGS
• POOL
• TRAMPOLINE
• FORT
• SPANGRAM: BACKYARD

RAM prices have become increasingly painful during the 2026 memory crisis, making discounts on higher-speed DDR5 kits welcome. The 32GB TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan ECO offers DDR5-6400 speeds and support for both Intel and AMD performance profiles.

• Best for: Desktop builders who want 32GB of relatively fast DDR5 memory with support for both major performance-profile standards.

• The deal: The TeamGroup 32GB T-Force Vulcan ECO DDR5-6400 kit is now $429 (was $479) at Newegg when you use code TEF395.

• Why it matters: DDR5-6400 provides much more theoretical bandwidth than slower DDR5 standards. You'll need compatible hardware and the appropriate XMP or EXPO profile enabled to reach the 6,400MT/s speed though.

Today's TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan ECO DDR5 deal

Why we recommend it

The T-Force Vulcan ECO gives you two 16GB DDR5 modules running at up to 6,400MT/s, with CL38 latency and 38-46-46-84 timings at 1.35V. It supports for both Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO, giving you flexibility when choosing a platform.

The modules include heat spreaders to help manage temperatures, and their silver finish is a stylish alternative to the usual black and white designs that dominate the desktop memory market.

Price context & historical value

Applying promo code TEF395 drops the price from $479 to $429, saving you $50, or around 10%. That's not an enormous reduction, but any money off is welcome in today's expensive memory market. This kit has been slightly cheaper at Newegg in the past though. Not so long ago it was available to buy for $415.99.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the 32GB TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan ECO DDR5 kit if...

You're building or upgrading a DDR5 desktop and want a fast 32GB kit with support for both major performance-profile standards. At 6,400MT/s, the Vulcan ECO offers considerably more memory bandwidth than entry-level DDR5-4800 or DDR5-5200 kits, although the real-world benefit will depend on your setup.

❌ Skip the 32GB TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan ECO DDR5 kit if...

Your current PC already has enough memory for everything you do, or your motherboard and processor can't take advantage of DDR5-6400. Given today's RAM prices, there's little reason to spend $429 unless you need the upgrade.

Also consider

CyberLink has long been one of our favorite alternatives to Adobe's creative suite, and currently there's a big sale on standalone alone apps as well as CyberLink Director Suite, which bundles the photo, video, and audio editor software alongside an audio editor and large royalty-free stock library.

• Best for: Content creators who regularly edit video, photographs and audio and want their main creative applications bundled into one subscription.

• The deal: CyberLink Director Suite is now $110 (was $150) for an annual subscription, and £95 (was £130) in the UK. Standalone apps are also discounted in the US here (click here) and in the UK here.

• Why we like it: CyberLink's creative tools have consistently reviewed well during our tests, offering an excellent all-rounder entry-point into video and photo editing. They're surprisingly advanced but beginner-friendly, and this is a good way to get the full suite.

Why we recommend it

Director Suite combines three powerful creative tools. PowerDirector 365 handles video production, PhotoDirector 365 covers photo editing and graphic design, and AudioDirector 365 provides tools for audio restoration, recording and mixing.

All three core apps have reviewed well in our tests.

In his 4-star review of PowerDirector, our expert Steve said it "remains one of the best video editing software for beginners, as well as intermediate editors." He gave PhotoDirector 4.5-stars and called it a "powerful multi-faceted beast, which not only allows you to organize and improve the quality of your photos, but also offers Photoshop-like compositing tools, as well as numerous generative AI features."

In her 4-star review, our audio expert Angel said AudioDirector "goes from strength to strength using powerful AI tools to separate elements giving even total novices to recording control over their material."

The applications are designed to work together, so projects can be passed between them without repeatedly rendering files. There's plenty of AI features too.

Price context & historical value

At $109.99 a year instead of $149.99, you're saving $40 on Director Suite, equivalent to 27% off. The annual subscription works out at just $9.17 per month, compared with $29.99 if you pay monthly, which would add up to $359.88 over a year — $249.89 more.

UK buyers can save 27%, with the price of Director Suite reduced from £129.99 to £94.99, equivalent to just £7.92 per month.

For more choices, check out our roundups of the best photo editors, and best video editing software.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy CyberLink Director Suite if...

You regularly work with video, photographs and audio and would prefer to have an integrated collection of creative applications than subscribe to different products. Director Suite also provides access to millions of royalty-free videos, images and music tracks from iStock by Getty Images and the Meta Sound Collection.

❌ Skip CyberLink Director Suite if...

You only need one type of editor. If almost everything you create is video, for example, paying for a suite containing dedicated photo and audio tools may not be necessary.

• US: Shop discounted creative software at CyberLink
• UK: See the full sale at CyberLink

One of the advantages of having written about tech for as long as I have is that you start to notice when the same ideas come around decade after decade, in different shapes and sizes. Especially the bad ones.

12 years ago Google invented something called Google Glass — a set of glasses complete with a camera so you could record what you were looking at — and it was so roundly hated by everyone that we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when they went away.

But now it's 2026 and smart glasses are back, powered by AI, and tied in with a world-famous fashion brand, but fundamentally they still have exactly the same problem, which still hasn't been fixed: they enable people to record other people without their consent.

The problem is that none of this should have come as a surprise. The privacy risks of putting a camera on somebody's face weren't merely predictable — they were predicted. Women were raising concerns about men using Google Glass to record them more than a decade ago.

And yet here we are again.

The curious case of Google Glass

Let’s remind ourselves what happened the first time that smart glasses arrived.

Google Glass arrived in 2013. It puts a small heads-up display and camera on the wearer's face, allowing them to take photos and record video from their point of view. Almost immediately, privacy became one of the defining controversies around it.

By 2014, women were explicitly raising issues of abuse. Wired reported that women were particularly interested in technology that could detect and block Glass because of concerns about men covertly recording them in nightclubs. "Even if they didn’t know if the device was recording, they felt threatened by its presence", said Oliver, the creator of the detection device.

Google Glass wearers were being called “Glassholes,” businesses were banning the device, and Google itself was publishing etiquette guidance because of complaints about people creepily filming others without permission.

By 2015, consumer Glass effectively died. Privacy wasn't its only problem — its price, awkward appearance, and lack of compelling everyday uses all played a part — but by January 2015 Google had stopped selling the consumer Explorer Edition. Glass survived as an enterprise product before Google finally discontinued the Enterprise Edition in 2023.

Smart glasses didn’t die with Google Glass. They had simply retreated to a lab to lick their wounds and wait for that vital next piece of technology that would make them relevant again. That technology was AI. In 2023, AI-powered smart glasses, partnered with leading fashion brands, started to emerge, with Meta leading the charge with its Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

This time they looked much more like ordinary glasses. Meta had also found the compelling use cases that Google Glass struggled to provide: its glasses could use AI to answer questions about what you were looking at, give you directions, and translate signs and conversations. But they could also still record what, or more importantly, who, you were looking at without needing that person's consent.

It’s like women don’t exist

Frankly, I don’t think Meta should have released them with that ability, but here we are. It’s like we’ve learned nothing from the Google Glass debacle. Almost as soon as the next generation of smart glasses emerged they were being used to harass women and record them without their consent or knowledge.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have been studying hundreds of social-media videos involving smart glasses and found men using them to approach and record women without their knowledge, including at gyms, workplaces and beaches. Australia's eSafety Commissioner says the technology can amplify gendered harms because recording can be almost undetectable, and specifically highlights pickup-artist content in which women often don't know they're being filmed.

The researchers analysed 350 publicly available Instagram videos from 2023–2026. In a subset of covert POV videos, around 60% of interactions were classified as potential harassment. And in about 43% of the videos, women were subjected to further abusive online commentary, sometimes exposing personal information.

These are real victims. CBS interviewed a woman who discovered she'd been secretly recorded only after the resulting video went viral, attracting more than 200,000 views. Her reaction said it all: “I had no say.”

And France has now opened an investigation involving alleged sexual harassment and discreet smart-glasses recording.

I don't think these products were designed to harm women. That's almost the point. Too often, the technology industry seems to design products around what the person using them can do, without giving enough consideration to the person standing on the other side of the technology. And when the potential for abuse disproportionately affects women, that's a particularly serious blind spot. Women have historically been underrepresented in the data and testing used for product design, with designers still describing the male body as the implicit default.

Meta clearly did think about privacy. The glasses have a recording LED specifically designed to tell people nearby when the camera is being used. But if your safeguard against covert recording is a tiny light on the front of the glasses — one that people have found ways to conceal or disable — is that really enough?

Did it consider what happens when a man wearing an almost invisible camera approaches a woman who's alone?

Meta's audio-only smart glasses

Yesterday at Meta Connect, Meta announced a new version of its smart glasses called the Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, which don’t have a camera. They got barely a mention in Zuckerberg’s keynote, but I wonder if they were released because of the existential threat to its business that the now commonly used “perv glasses” moniker poses.

Ray-Ban Meta Audio has no camera. You can still listen to music, make calls, translate conversations, and talk to Meta's AI, but the person sitting opposite you no longer needs to wonder whether they're being secretly recorded.

Meta hasn't said the Audio glasses exist because of the privacy backlash, and removing the camera inevitably removes some genuinely useful features too. For visually impaired people in particular, a camera combined with AI can be transformative.

But Ray-Ban Meta Audio proves something important: smart glasses don't have to contain a camera.

Twelve years ago, women were already warning that putting inconspicuous cameras on people's faces could enable men to record them without their knowledge, and today researchers are documenting precisely that behavior.

Google Glass users became known as “Glassholes” because people hated that the person they were talking to was recording them. Twelve years later, we're having the same argument about “perv glasses.”

That's what makes me angry. This wasn't an unforeseeable consequence of some revolutionary new technology. We'd already run this experiment and realized that these should never have got out of the lab in the first place.

• WordPress Core flaw CVE‑2026‑87902 (path traversal, 8.1 severity) enables PHP file inclusion and possible RCE
• Patch released in v7.1.2 and backported to 4.7+; exploitation began within hours, now widespread
• Admins must urgently update; interim mitigations include blocking traversal sequences and disabling risky ARP/PHP settings

Hackers are actively exploiting a high severity vulnerability in WordPress that can lead to full website takeover, researchers are saying. A patch is available, and WordPress users are urged to upgrade immediately or risk losing access to their assets.

Discovered by security researcher Robert Ressl, the vulnerability in question is tracked as CVE-2026-87902. It is an 8.1/10 (high severity) unauthenticated path traversal flaw affecting WordPress Core. According to WordPress itself, as well as the National Vulnerability Database, the bug can lead to local PHP file inclusion and, in certain scenarios, remote code execution (RCE).

"An unauthenticated attacker can make get_page_template() page-template resolution include a chosen readable local .php file outside the active theme directories," it was said in the official security advisory.

Achieving RCE

WordPress is the world’s number one website hosting and builder platform, powering more than half of all websites active on the internet right now. However, that doesn’t mean all of them are susceptible to RCE. Only websites ticking these boxes are at risk:

Sites with parent or child themes that have a top-level directory with a name starting with ‘page-’ (for example, ‘page-templates).

Threat actors must target a local .PHP file that exists and is readable by the web server

The web server account must be able to read the included file (for example, pearcmd.php, if PHP’s register_argc_argv setting is active)

WordPress said that both the official PHP image for Docker, and the default cPanel configuration, are affected (users must be running a PHP version before 8.5, though).

The issue was fixed in version 7.1.2, which is now available for download. Fixes were also backported to older versions up to 4.7. Releases before 4.8 are not supported, it was said, and will not be getting a fix.

Attacking vulnerable websites

Wordpress security company Patchstack said the first exploitation attempts started roughly five hours after the patch was released, and these were primarily reconnaissance efforts. In the hours to follow, malicious activity increased tenfold, it was said, as crooks started attempting to deliver malicious payloads to vulnerable websites, as well.

“When this post first went up, every request we had seen was reconnaissance against harmless core files,” Patchstack said. “That is no longer true. Attackers are now including pearcmd.php and using it to write PHP files to disk, and public scanning tooling for this CVE is in circulation.”

At first, Patchstack said the attacks were coming from a handful of IP addresses, and advised website admins to simply block them. However, the attacks have now become rather widespread, meaning blocking individual addresses is no longer a viable strategy. They urge everyone to apply the patch without delay:

“The first evening came from a small cluster of addresses. It is now spread across a few hundred, so blocklisting individual sources is not a strategy. The heaviest talkers at the time of writing:

43.250.53.42

180.251.159.243

195.178.110.247

107.189.14.87

45.61.184.170

92.246.130.76

The file write attempts specifically come from a much smaller subset of those addresses, which is the usual pattern of a few operators acting on results that a much larger scanning population produced.”

Those that cannot update immediately should reject traversal sequences in the pagename parameter, Patchstack added. A real page slug never contains one, they added, meaning it can be blocked without affecting normal traffic. Furthermore, disabling register_argc_argv does not fix the inclusion but it does break the pearcmd chain, which is the difference between an information leak and code execution.

Via BleepingComputer

Among the host of new products that Meta unveiled at its Connect event this week — an AI Tamagotchi, anyone? — we got the Meta Ray-Ban Gen 3 smart glasses. Here we're going to break down all the key specs of the new specs, and in particular how they compare to the model that launched this time last year.

In our Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 review, we praised the AI-powered glasses for bringing with them improvements in camera quality, battery life, and design, and there are upgrades to talk about with the third-generation too.

Whether you already own a Gen 2 pair and are thinking of making the switch to the new models, or you're considering getting involved in smart glasses for the first time, here's how the 2025 and 2026 versions compare.

Pricing and design

The Meta Ray-Ban Gen 3 are out now and yours for a starting price of $449 / £409 / AU$679, which is a modest price bump over the previous versions. Meta says the overall design is slimmer and more comfortable to wear compared to the Gen 2, though the weights listed on Meta's store suggest there isn't much change there (at least in terms of the Wayfarer, which is the only style carried over).

There are three different styles to choose from. You've got the Wayfarer we saw with Gen 2 (also available in large), and two new additions: the iconic Aviator design, plus the Zena, which Meta describes as "a bold new cat-eye frame that makes a confident statement". A total of 27 lens and color combinations are available across these frame shapes, with colors including Black and Havana (a mix of dark and light brown).

When the Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 launched, they were available for $379 / £379 / AU$599 and up, and at the time of writing, that price hasn't dropped with the arrival of the Gen 3 models. All three styles are still available to buy too: the Wayfarer (in standard or large), the cat-eye Skyler, and the more rounded Headliner.

At launch time, Meta mentioned 27 lens and color combinations for the Gen 2 glasses, but those combinations aren't exactly the same as they are for the Gen 3, and they changed over time with seasonal offerings — something that's likely for the new models too. So the takeaway is that there's about the same range of design choice, though the specific options are different based on which generation of smart glasses you choose.

Battery life and specs

You don't want your smart specs dying during the day, and Meta says the Ray-Ban Gen 2 are capable of lasting 8 hours between battery charges. Assuming you take a fully charged case out with you as well, you're getting an extra 48 hours (or six full recharge cycles) on top of that before you need to find a power socket.

With the Ray-Ban Gen 3, Meta is promising up to 9 hours of battery life on a single charge, with an extra 50 hours supplied by the charging case. There's also mention of charging the glasses from zero to 50% in a mere two minutes, which is the same claim made with the previous Gen 2 models.

When it comes to the camera, it's all the same: both the Gen 3 and the Gen 2 have a 12MP ultrawide camera capable of shooting up to 3K resolution video (just be respectful of other people's privacy). There is a boost for voice input though, because the Gen 3 has a 6-mic array compared to the 5-mic array of the Gen 2.

The loudness and bass of the speakers is listed as the same between generations — 76.1 dB(C) — so there's no difference there, while the 32GB of internal storage matches as well. The headline upgrades as far as key details go are better battery life and improved mic inputs, though we're basing that on spec sheets rather than any testing.

Features and AI

In terms of what you can actually do with the Gen 3 smart glasses, everything is more or less the same as before. The only exception is an extra 'action' button you get on the new models, alongside the existing photo/video capture button, which can be customized to launch a specific feature: the AI assistant, sending a text to a favorite contact, or activating the on-board translation, for example.

Besides that, you get access to the same Meta AI on your glasses, and it's the same companion Meta AI app running on your phone too. All the core functions are the same, including audio calls, video calls (where the caller sees what you're seeing), live assistance through the AI about anything you're looking at, and audio playback for your music, podcasts, and audiobooks.

The upgrade isn't quite as dramatic as it was from Gen 1 to Gen 2 — you might remember there were significant improvements to video capture quality, and big leaps in battery life too — so if you already own a pair of Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 smart glasses then you don't really need to upgrade immediately, unless you're a big fan of the new designs.

If you're still on the Gen 1 models or you're looking at smart glasses for the first time, however, the Meta Ray-Ban Gen 3 are a much more compelling proposition. After the latest round of Meta announcements, you've also now got the choice of the Meta VR Glasses and the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses as well.

• Microsoft had blocked posts that used the term 'Microslop' on its Copilot Discord channel
• This was a "temporary anti-spam measure," apparently
• The policy is no longer in place, but if Microsoft thinks the word will die off, that seems highly unlikely

Microsoft is apparently letting go over the 'Microslop' affair and is no longer policing its Discord channel to block the term.

You may recall that at the start of this year, the Microslop nickname came about after a comment from Microsoft's CEO – relating to 'AI slop' – and the company cracked down on the word by blocking posts that used it on the Copilot Discord channel.

Windows Latest noticed that this is no longer the case, and the term is now being openly used in the general chat channel. Searching for 'Microslop' produces over 200 results in posts that go back weeks.

In short, Microsoft has moderated its moderation, come to its senses, and realized that cracking down and censoring in this manner is only going to inflame passions against AI, if it achieves anything.

I should make it clear that Microsoft has never said anything official on this matter, in terms of admitting any ban in the first place, let alone the lifting of it. Windows Latest reports that it did hear from Microsoft back at the time, though, and was told that the filtering was a "temporary anti-spam measure" rather than a permanent policy. It seems this is indeed the case.

Analysis: Streisand effect

The writer of the Windows Latest article further observes that they've noticed that on Reddit, X, and Windows forums, there are fewer mentions of the Microslop term these days. It happens "much less often" we're told.

I'm not so sure about that. I still see Microslop mentioned with some regularity, although I concede that the popularity of the term has diminished. This is a subjective matter, of course, and it may reflect that I visit more negative posts about Windows 11 than the Windows Latest writer has done in the past few months – who can say?

The writer acknowledges that the "criticism is still very much there" in terms of 'AI slop' in Windows 11, but that it has died down since Microsoft started fixing the OS, and made some moves to minimize the presence of AI in certain areas.

I think what Microsoft has done so far is more about not mentioning or actively pushing AI, rather than stripping it out of Windows 11, although it's true some work has been done on the latter front. It doesn't amount to a whole lot, though, in the grand scheme of things.

There has been a change of attitude, yes, but that was absolutely necessary considering the whole 'fix Windows 11 campaign' was embarked upon after Microsoft was blasted for focusing on adding AI trimmings to the system rather than getting the fundamentals right with the OS.

I still see a lot of chorusing of 'Microslop' particularly when a Windows 11 bug emerges. Commenters are very quick to jump on Microsoft and fire criticisms along the lines of 'this is what you get when AI does your coding', and the term Microslop is inevitably included in these kinds of threads. (Microsoft has admitted that it uses AI for coding to a substantial extent, and Windows 11 users won't let the firm forget that in a hurry).

I personally don't think the term Microslop is going anywhere, and it'll be hanging around Microsoft's neck for the rest of the company's existence in all likelihood. While it's obviously a positive step that any 'temporary' censorship has been rescinded, it's a bit late now. Any attempt to curtail negative talk about AI was always only going to further highlight grievances, cause more bad feeling, and yet more damaging chatter.

As one Redditor put it: "How many times do companies need to learn about the Streisand effect?"

• Nvidia Smooth Motion has been modded onto RTX 3000 series GPUs
• The experimental mod allows driver-level frame generation in unsupported games
• Nvidia hasn't officially implemented this and other features on older RTX hardware yet

Modders continue to find new ways to implement Nvidia's latest technologies on older hardware, and now it's been done with Team Green's driver-level frame generation.

As reported by Wccftech, Nvidia Smooth Motion has been unofficially made to work on RTX 3000 series GPUs, with a new NVSmooth30 mod available on GitHub, confirmed to work on an RTX 3050 laptop and an RTX 3080 desktop GPU.

Nvidia's Smooth Motion functionality is essentially identical to AMD's Fluid Motion Frames, meaning that it enables frame generation in games that don't have official support for it — a tool that is most useful for older games or games running in emulators.

The mod works by modifying Nvidia's driver-level frame generation DLL (Dynamic Link Library) file, labeled NvPresent64, bypassing the usual compatibility checks that would stop it from working on Ampere GPU hardware, aka RTX 3000 series GPUs. It also works by "conservative metadata retargeting" from Ada Lovelace (RTX 4000 series) and targets Ampere instead.

The creator says that all users need to do is place the DLL file into the relevant game's folder and use the Nvidia Profile Inspector app to enable Smooth Motion. The process is very simple, but this is an experimental project, so it runs the risk of game bugs and crashes, or potentially other issues — and must not be used in online games using anti-cheat (doing so could result in a ban).

Gamers want new features, but new GPUs are unaffordable

Nvidia has been quite impressive with its latest technologies, notably with DLSS 5 Neural Rendering (which I saw at Gamescom 2026), and Smooth Motion has been one of many over the last few years.

The GPU market is in complete disarray due to the RAM crisis, which means prices for GPUs for both AMD Radeon and Nvidia GeForce GPUs are way too high for most people to consider an upgrade. Features like Multi-Frame Generation, Dynamic Frame Generation, and Smooth Motion are those that PC users would love, but can't use on older hardware.

Modders have consistently proved that these features can be backported in some way, with some even going as far as porting DLSS 5 onto the RTX 4080 (despite the performance hit).

DLSS 5 Neural Rendering coming to older hardware in the immediate future is unrealistic — but Nvidia has previously told me that it does plan on adding backwards compatibility at some point, though it's likely to come to 4000-series models first, and then we'll have to hope for 3000-series later in the future, if it's even possible.

But it feels as though features such as Frame Generation, and specifically Smooth Motion, deserve backporting attention now more than ever, as users are stuck with older GPUs.

Doing so would put Team Green in the good books of many PC gamers, and keep players from relying on unofficial mods to achieve better performance and enjoy GeForce hardware to the fullest extent.

• Gambit researchers uncovered ongoing AI‑driven skimming campaign stealing 600,000+ payment records since July 2026
• Attackers used three autonomous harnesses (Strix, Cairn, Hermes) to compromise dozens of retail sites cheaply
• Victims include major US firms; campaign shows AI enables faster, persistent, low‑cost cyberattacks at scale

In July 2026, a hacker tasked autonomous AI agents to attack retail organizations around the world, deploy credit card skimmers, and steal payment data.

Since then, the bots launched hundreds of attack projects, compromised dozens of organizations, and stole at least 600,000 payment records - and to make matters worse, the campaign is still live, attacking and breaking into websites as we speak.

All of this was reported by security researchers Gambit, who said they managed to recover the operator’s staging server and through it - reconstruct the ongoing campaign. They also saw the skimmers live on victim websites, and sifted through logs and AI claims found on the attacker’s server. In just five days, between September 10 and 15, the agents made 105 attack waves and compromised 27 organizations “to varying degrees.”

Among the victims are a Fortune 500 hospitality company, a “major” US airline, a large private US industrial supplies distributor, and a US online fashion retailer. One of the AI tools would use a website ranking service to produce a list of potential targets, focusing primarily on those running custom-built software.

A fistful of dollars

But the victims are not the “interesting” part of this story - the attackers are. Gambit believes they are financially motivated Chinese threat actors. They are using three AI “harnesses” (frameworks, essentially), which can run almost the entire attack chain autonomously, striking around 10 companies a day, for a handful of dollars per company.

In four weeks, the attackers spent around $7,000, meaning that their entire cost for the operation so far was no more than $18,000. Breaking it down, it means that the attacker spent around $25 per target.

“Spread over the companies attacked, this is a marginal cost of a few US dollars to a few tens of US dollars for each targeted company,” Gambit’s researchers said. “The operator’s own cost review gives a similar figure, a mean of $25.46 over 101 completed scans, from $3.13 for the cheapest target to $79.31 for the most expensive.”

“Where access was achieved, it usually took less than a day, and in many cases just a few hours. We also detected instructions in the attacker’s playbook that could disrupt the operations of a company as a result of data deletion or cleanup procedures run by the agent - and this has indeed happened in some of the breaches,” Gambit said.

The three harnesses

The three harnesses are called Strix, Cairn, and Hermes.

Gambit describes Hermes as an open source autonomous AI agent with a persistent memory, skills that the agent wrote and edited itself, a searchable archive of past sessions, scheduled jobs, and a web console. On the staging server the researchers analyzed, it loaded a Chinese system persona called “SOUL - Red Team Operator”, which contained 121 skills (78 attack skills).

“Hermes is the operator’s console for orchestrating the activity and for direct hacking activities,” Gambit explained. “It used Anthropic’s opus-4.6 (after newer models refused its requests), with 1,951 prompts typed by the human across 260 sessions - only a few prompts per target. The human prompts are short instructions in Chinese, usually launching an attack, tasking the agent with a general next step, or what to do next after achieving access.”

Strix is an open-source AI pentest tool, while Cairn is an autonomous pentest engine. It receives target domains and an objective, such as to get a shell or admin access, then runs for hours until it achieves the objective, times out, or is stopped. Cairn used DeepSeek v4.1 Flash, it was said.

Gambit’s researchers seem to be rather impressed with the campaign. They described it as very low cost, with a level of patience, persistence, and creativity that most human attackers would be “unlikely to sustain”, managing to achieve “far greater results, far faster.”

They have also called to arms, urging organizations to “adapt to a reality where attacks are significantly faster and more comprehensive.” To do that, they must adopt a resilience-first mentality and deploy a security stack that can match the AI on speed.

Many of the affected organizations were notified, and the skimmers were removed, they said.

• $1.6 billion has been claimed by scammers impersonating police and government officials
• The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received almost 61,000 complaints concerning such scams between January 2025 and July 2026
• Some scams targeted foreign nationals and immigrants, threatening to cancel passports or impose extradition, unless payment is made

Between January 2025 and July 2026, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received almost 61,000 complaints concerning scams using police and government official impersonation tactics. As a result, around $1.6 billion is believed to have been scammed and extorted.

Tactics used by scammers included unsolicited phone calls and in some cases video calls, with victims losing an average of $26,000 per scam.

Particularly concerning is the targeting of foreign nationals, international students, and immigrant citizens, often with threats to cancel visas and home country passports. Incredibly, 10% of all losses were traced to a single scam, one that targeted fewer than 3% of the victims.

Foreign national victims

According to the FBI, the fake cop/fake government official scam has various angles, from alleging missed jury duty to threatening arrest due to circumstantial links to an alleged crime.

The demand from the scammers, inevitably, is payment.

Making a commitment to extreme lengths of scamming and extortion, the criminals took things to a new level when it came to targeting victims. International students, visiting foreign nationals, and other immigrant citizens were given special treatment. Not only were they threatened with extradition, there was also the implication of victims losing their home country passport.

To convince the target, scammers built actual studio sets, donned uniforms or suits, and appeared in video calls to the victims, who were convinced they were talking to foreign law enforcement agents or US-based diplomats. Creating the illusion of officialdom to sell the scam, victims paid whatever necessary to stay in their adopted country.

How to spot the scam

It is important to note that not all fraud of this type takes place in the US. These may be online or offline, but the so-called fake cop scam is an international criminal phenomenon. So, how do you avoid it?

We’ll assume you’ve answered a call inadvertently rather than having spam calls blocked (that should be set already).

First, remain calm. These situations are designed to impose stress and heightened anxiety. Scammers rely on these factors to cloud their victim’s judgement and force the narrative they are selling (“you missed jury duty”/“your presence in the country is illegal.”)

Second, it is vital to request credentials. Failure to provide these is the first red flag that the person communicating with you is not what they seem. That’s your cue to end the conversation.

Third, check the credentials. It doesn’t matter how long this takes – a legitimate caller will not mind waiting for you to do the necessary background check, even if it means them calling back.

Finally, and most importantly: neither law enforcement, security services, nor the FBI will demand money. If that is happening, it’s time to end the call.

All eyes were on Meta Connect 2026. The annual hardware showcase is where the company debuts its latest wearables, and this year’s event comes at a time when anti-smart glasses sentiment seems to be at an all-time high — though that didn’t stop Meta showcasing several brand new pairs of specs.

Smart glasses are getting banned from offices, event spaces, pubs, and courtrooms (among other venues), and folks are expressing their uneasiness at being under the gaze of camera-equipped specs — especially given the potential for wearers to film those around them covertly.

Perhaps that’s why Meta has debuted, for the first time, smart glasses that entirely lack cameras, in the shape of the Ray-Ban Meta Audio — though in the pre-Connect briefing I had for the glasses (I’m writing this ahead of the showcase, so can’t speak for what Mark Zuckerberg will say in his version of the keynote) Meta didn’t attempt to link its Audio glasses with the privacy backlash.

Instead, Meta focused on the advantages of these glasses — chiefly their longer 12-hour battery life. We’ll need to see how this figure holds up in our day-to-day testing, though it sounds like these glasses will be able to provide AI assistance and music playback for much longer stretches of your day than previous models.

You’ll be able to enjoy wearing them for longer too. The specs now weigh just 43g (down from 49g for the lightest Gen 2 design), and they also boast some of the Ray-Ban Meta Optics’ (Meta's prescription glasses line) fit adjustments, like ergonomic hinges and adjustable temple tips. Based on my time wearing the Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, these features help to make them some of Meta’s comfiest yet — though my demo was only for about 20 minutes or so which isn’t the same as all-day wear.

Audio performance is also getting a boost thanks to Dolby Atmos support. The glasses' microphones are much better at picking up an immersive soundscape, and the speakers are better at playing it back to you.

I heard a few examples in my demo where the video swapped between Atmos and standard Stereo playback, and the difference was night and day. With Atmos I felt so much more immersed.

If you’ve wanted to pick up a pair of smart glasses, but don’t want ones with a camera, these could be the specs for you when they launch on October 13, priced at $349 / £319 / AU$529.

Problem solved?

Of course, Meta hasn’t abandoned its camera glasses — it just announced its Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 model — and in my briefing Meta pushed back on claims its specs can be used covertly.

It described the recording indicator as being “a light you can’t miss,” and noted how it has improved its glasses’ tamper-protection features in recent updates. It didn’t provide details on if or how it will make the indicator more obvious (many I’ve spoken to would disagree with Meta’s “can’t miss” claim), though given the existential threat to its business the ‘perv glasses’ moniker poses, I expect more protections and safeguards are on the horizon (assuming they aren’t announced at Connect).

Audio-only glasses present a partial solution to the issue. They can still capture audio of yourself and those around you, and aren’t as useful as camera-equipped glasses — you can’t provide visual context to the Muse AI, for example — but the lack of snappers also means they’re a lot less invasive.

And despite being more limited, the glasses can still offer some useful support. Meta has announced a new Hearing Enhancement feature for its specs. The feature is designed to help people with mild or moderate hearing loss enhance the audio of the world around them. It's not free, however, as it'll cost $149.99 a month (pricing outside the US TBC), or it'll come as part of a Meta One subscription.

Possible added costs aside, this feature is an incredible tool — and a showcase for the good things new tech like smart glasses can provide — and some of the Meta employees at the event told me it's the best thing they've worked on while at the company.

Besides the new Meta VR Glasses, the Ray-Ban Meta Audio are probably the glasses I’m most excited to experience, although camera-less specs aren’t my favorite, as they often lack audio capabilities and use a display — Meta’s specs are the opposite, with no display and Dolby Atmos audio, and that’s much more my style.

I want a casual audio experience with the occasional AI assistance, not a constant HUD that feels mildly useful at best, and annoyingly distracting at worst. I’ll be interested to see what others think, though.

Will this camera-less design face less backlash, will it be widely accepted? Or has the negativity around smart specs gone too far for brands to be able to win people back?

I think there’s still time for smart glasses to be saved, though ignoring the cameras problem is only a half step. Better privacy protections are still needed, but we’ll have to wait and see who acts next — will Meta and others properly regulate themselves, will the court of public opinion continue to rule against 'perv glasses', or will government regulators take the decision out of everyone else’s hands?

Meta Connect just ended, and the biggest announcement of the night for me was easily the debut of Meta’s VR Glasses — even if they were leaked ahead of schedule by Meta’s own prescription tutorial.

Ahead of their official reveal, I got to spend 30 minutes with the new tech, experiencing a wide range of demos that might have convinced me this isn’t merely Meta’s best VR headset yet — it could be the best VR headset I’ve used yet.

The only downside is we’ll be waiting a little longer to wear it. The headset isn’t due to launch until “Spring 2027” (March, April or May), but at least we know it’ll cost just $1,299 when it does land (price elsewhere TBC).

Slimmer than ever

Let’s start with the design.

Slimmer and lighter than anything that has come before (the actual headset part you wear is down to just around 100g); this headset looks like a pair of glasses. They even swap the headstrap for glasses stems to stay on your head.

The bulk of the weight is instead housed in a puck you carry in your pocket — a lot like the puck used by the Apple Vision Pro or Samsung Galaxy XR. The big difference here is Meta’s isn’t just a battery pack, it also houses all of the headset’s compute. It’s tethered to the headset via an optical cable, but this wire never got in the way while I used the headset — whether I was up and moving, playing a game like Beat Saber Flux, or sitting being productive with multitasking across multiple windows.

The headset can support controllers; however, it doesn’t come with any in the box. Instead, you’ll need to rely on hand controls: either reaching out and grabbing, or the look and pinch controls popularized by Apple’s Vision Pro and Samsung’s Galaxy XR.

Lastly, I should note that, despite being called glasses, this is a headset. They have an opaque front cover that only appears to be see-through to the wearer because of passthrough. This live video feed of the real world isn’t yet perfect (it’s still a little grainy and there’s a slight delay), though it seems at least as good as the competition based on my experience so far.

They do support pescription inserts too. They connect magnetically to the display lenses and don't disrupt the slimness of the headset at all based on my experience.

The device is just so supremely comfortable to wear. My demo was only around 30 minutes, but at one-fifth the weight of a Meta Quest 3 or Samsung Galaxy XR, the difference is immediately noticeable — this is a headset I don’t see myself needing to take off, even after multiple days of working with it on.

Plus, it’s so portable you can easily take this everywhere in whatever bag you have on hand. No dedicated carry case required. I can’t wait to travel with this thing.

An all-round powerhouse

While this can be used for all existing Meta Quest 3-compatible apps (though you will need controllers for those that don’t support hand tracking, either as a new paid add-on or by commandeering your Quest’s handsets), where this headset truly shines is static experiences: productivity and entertainment.

We know VR headsets are excellent for multitasking. You can arrange virtual project app windows around you, and even bring your PC screen into XR to create the perfect setup. Meta’s headset boasts two useful additional features.

First, you aren’t limited to the number of displays your physical setup has when you connect it to your headset. Each laptop or PC can be extended to up to three virtual monitors, a tool that some previous iterations of virtual desktop apps haven’t been able to offer (You could open multiple VR app windows, but only as many connected device windows as you had physical monitors).

Secondly, Meta’s headset can turn any surface into a keyboard. It just scans the surface in front of you — be it a cafe table, a seat tray on a plane, or a bench at the park — and then virtually projects a keyboard and trackpad you can type and swipe on. It works seamlessly. In my demo, I was able to type as swiftly and accurately as I could on a physical accessory, and in terms of portability, this is yet another win for Meta’s VR Glasses.

Moving on to entertainment, it seems Disney Plus’ Apple exclusivity has ended as the app and its library of 3D films are hitting Meta’s new headset. Because it’s an app, you can download content to watch on the go, which includes brand new immersive watching experiences.

While it was still just a demo, I got to experience watching a clip of Avengers: Endgame that extended beyond the screen in a souped-up version of Philips Ambilight.

It’s the scene where Thor is forging his new axe, I was sitting in that same forge. The room lit up and reacted as events unfolded in the film, ending with lightning flying out of the screen as Stormbreaker helped Thor return to full strength. It was a bit gimmicky, but also fun — not something I’d want for every movie, but an experience I’d want when returning to a big tentpole.

All of this content, be it immersive movies, a VR game, or a work document, looks beautiful on the 5K micro-OLED screen. It boasts a 37 pixel-per-degree resolution, which is around the PPD that its rivals, the Apple Vision Pro and Samsung Galaxy XR, boast (Samsung and Apple haven’t revealed these figures, but they have been estimated during product teardowns).

This is significantly better than the Quest 3’s mere 25PPD, and it meets the standard of being able to deliver the IMAX Enhanced Format — with superb audio and visuals. I got a taste of this in my demo, and I’m keen to experience more.

I need this yesterday

I’m about to jet set to LA for a press trip, and I so desperately wish I could be taking the Meta VR Glasses with me for the flight — both for getting work done and for immersing myself in a movie on a big screen rather than the back of the chair in front of me.

Alas, the VR specs aren’t due to land until 2027, though we know how much they’ll cost: $1,299. Much less than a Vision Pro, or a Galaxy XR, and cheaper than the highest price Xreal has said its Aura glasses — the closest thing I’ve tried to the Meta VR Glasses — could be.

At the time of writing, Meta hasn’t revealed too much in the way of specs (I’m writing this up based on a pre-Connect briefing). The Meta VR Glasses can run any Quest 3 app and can multitask across six windows at once, so it must be at least somewhat capable. I expect it boasts at least 12GB of RAM and the latest Snapdragon XR chipset.

I’m just impressed Meta can commit to such a relatively low price, especially months in advance. There are so many unknowns over trade and RAM demand that we’ve seen companies not reveal prices until as close to the last second as possible. Meta has bucked a trend here, but I expect it would only do so if 100% confident the cost won’t budge — if it doesn’t, I’ll be very, very happy.

At the time of writing Meta hasn’t revealed too much in the way of specs (I’m writing this up based on a pre-Connect briefing). The Meta VR Glasses can run any Quest 3 app, and can multitask across six windows at once so it must be at least somewhat capable — so I expect it boasts at least 12GB of RAM, and the latest Snapdragon XR chipset.

I’m just impressed Meta can commit to such a relatively low price, especially months in advance. There’s so many unknowns over trade and RAM demand that we’ve seen companies not reveal prices until as close to the last second as possible. Meta has bucked a trend here, but I expect it would only do so if 100% confident the cost won’t budge — if it doesn’t I’ll be very, very happy.

Even as public opinion turns against camera-equipped smart glasses, Meta is pushing forward with its generally well-received and quite popular Ray-Ban Meta line. Alongside the much-anticipated Meta Ray-Ban Audio glasses, which skip cameras entirely and come in two styles, Clubmaster and Burbank, there's also the next generation of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

Like the previous generation, the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3) still features onboard cameras with the all-important glowing LED ring that alerts you when a photo is being taken or a video is being recorded. It's an important safeguard, and Meta has added more protections against folks who try to disable or conceal it, but concerns remain.

Meta's pushing forward with the Gen 3, even if the audio-only models prove more popular. They're launching today in three styles: Ray-Ban Meta Aviator, Ray-Ban Meta Zena, and a new version of the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer. Pricing starts at $449 in the United States; we're working to confirm UK and Australia pricing.

The story across the board is better hardware, all tucked into smart glasses that more closely resemble real glasses, with lighter and thinner builds where possible. The Aviators are particularly exciting to see adopted for the AI and smart era. The frames are thicker than the classic wire ones, but they still frame the face well. Zena is decidedly modern and sleek as a cat's eye, while Wayfarer is still the iconic, cool frame that Ray-Ban introduced years ago.

I'm testing the Ray-Ban Meta Aviator in a brown shade, and you can see my unboxing video embedded below. I like this color, especially compared with my speckled brown Gen 1 Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarers.

There are 27 total combinations when you account for colors and lens types, and if you're willing to pay for it, you can fit these with transition lenses and even prescription lenses.

Regardless of frame style or lens type, you benefit from improved tech onboard. For starters, the cameras — if you choose to use them, and as mentioned, the ring will glow when you do — can take 12-megapixel photos and record 3K Ultra HD video, with Dolby Atmos support for a more cinematic audio experience during playback. There's also a Dynamic Photo mode, similar to Live Photos on iOS, which snaps a few shots so you can pick the best one.

Battery life is also improved. It isn't quite at the 12 hours of the new Meta Ray-Ban Audio models, but the Gen 3s last up to nine hours on a full charge. That's an hour longer than the Gen 2s, and the included charging case lets you recharge on the go.

Finally, just like the Meta Glasses — including the Kylie edition — that launched earlier in 2026, the Gen 3s get more microphones. Six of them improve voice pickup, whether you're drafting a message, asking Meta AI a question, or on a call. Meta promises they cut over 90% of background noise, and we look forward to putting that to the test.

While it's not a night-and-day difference over the second generation, the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3) shows that Meta has settled on the core feature set it wants for its AI glasses. Now, in a move likely to broaden their appeal, it's focusing on offering more styles, and its partnership with Ray-Ban is clearly still evolving. The Gen 3s continue the quest for smart glasses that feel closer to the regular versions of these frames, while adding the latest tech for a compelling experience.

Just how compelling will be weighed against the added privacy concerns, but let's hope Meta keeps adding more privacy features and keeps cracking down on those who try to block out the LEDs.

We'll be back soon with our full thoughts — and if you ask us, the Aviators look pretty, pretty nice — but if you're already sold, the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3) are up for order right now, starting at $449 in the US, from Meta, Ray-Ban, and other authorized sellers.