Soundcore’s latest noise-crushing headphones are on sale for a new low price

My colleague John Higgins considered Soundcore’s Space One some of the best budget noise-canceling headphones you could buy when they launched in 2023 — and their successor has only improved upon their winning formula, albeit with a $30 price increase. Thankfully, the Soundcore Space 2 are currently on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart in all three colors for an all-time low of $106.49 ($23 off), making them even easier to recommend.

Soundcore Space 2

Where to Buy:

The Space 2 builds on the original with improved active noise cancellation, particularly when it comes to the low-frequency sounds associated with trains and airplane engines. They also deliver more accurate sound performance thanks to various design upgrades, while retaining many of the same features that made the Sound One sound so good for the price, including support for high-resolution LDAC audio. You also still get access to HearID 3.0, which lets you personalize the sound by listening to a series of samples and adjusting accordingly.

Battery life is another welcome improvement. The Space 2 can last up to 50 hours with ANC enabled or 70 hours with it switched off, up from 40 and 55 hours, respectively, on the original. And when your battery dies, you can still use the equipped 3.5mm jack for wired listening. They’ll also automatically pause playback when you take them off, which is handy when you need to step away without losing your place in a song or podcast.

https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/1017667/anker-soundcore-space-2-noise-canceling-headphones-deal-sale

Fi’s GPS-equipped dog trackers are on sale for 30 percent off

If your dog or cat is prone to getting lost, or you frequently go on adventures together, you can save 30 percent on Fi pet trackers through October 25th when you enter coupon code SCARY at checkout. The sale includes several satellite-connected trackers, including the Fi Ultra GPS we previously tested, which is down to $209.30 after the discount. That effectively brings it down to its original launch price.

The IP68-rated Fi Ultra is fully waterproof, even in saltwater, and lasts up to five days, depending on how active your dog is. The accessory — which conveniently attaches to your dog’s collar or harness — uses a combination of LTE, GPS, and Starlink satellite coverage to track your dog’s current location and recent history, even in cellular dead zones; it can also send noise and vibration alerts to catch your canine’s attention.

Fi Ultra dog tracker

The Fi Ultra is the first dog tracker to combine T-Satellite with Starlink, GPS, and LTE connectivity to help you find your lost dog anywhere.

Where to Buy:

~~$299~~ $209.3 at Fi (with code SCARY)

We spent time with the Fi Ultra earlier this year, testing it in a remote location in South Carolina. While the tracking was precise, the two- or three-minute update interval could be problematic for fast dogs, and it drained the battery quickly in Lost Mode (we barely got two days on a full charge). It’s also fairly sizable, making it a better fit for larger pups.

Unsurprisingly, you’ll need an active subscription to use the Fi Ultra’s tracking features, though you’ll get a discount on your first term, with six-month, one-year, and two-year plans available that offer lower overall monthly rates. For example, a one-year plan is $99 for the first year, and $189 each year after. However, the plans only work in the United States and offer no satellite coverage in Alaska.

Read our Fi Ultra review.

Other deals to consider

You can currently grab a physical copy of Kirby Air Riders for the Nintendo Switch 2 at Amazon for $48.99, a decent discount from its usual list price of $69.99. The colorful, fast-paced racing game offers surprising depth in terms of character and kart customization, with both cosmetic and functional upgrades to purchase and deploy over time. Read more.
The JLab JBuds Talk USB-C microphone is on sale at Amazon for $24.99, where it usually fluctuates between $50 and $100, the full MSRP. A dedicated microphone can make a huge difference in audio quality over headphones or your laptop’s built-in mic. The Talk features four directional modes for different situations and a 96KHz/24-bit sample rate for high-quality recordings and voice clarity.
Amazon is selling Lego’s Star Wars Grogu set for a discounted price of $103.99 ($26 off), which matches its lowest price to date. The 1,200-piece kit features Grogu in his beskar armor, with a satchel to carry his equipment (or snacks). You can also reattach his arms and facial features for different expressions, and a built-in lever lets you turn his head.

https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/1017196/fi-ultra-gps-dog-tracker-kirby-air-riders-deal-sale

Elon Musk’s dangerous grip on outer space

Elon Musk looking up with stock tickers and Space X rockets.

Last week, Starshield – the version of SpaceX’s Starlink used by the Ukrainian military – was throttled to block terminals traveling above certain speeds from accessing the service. The Ukrainian army’s interceptors, which counter Russian drones carrying bombs, suddenly stopped working at high speeds, making it easier for Russia to attack the country’s energy infrastructure and leading to a reported two deaths and at least 17 injuries.

The Ukrainian military reported receiving no advance warning about the Starshield speed restriction. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was a direct message from the US amid rising tensions b …

Read the full story at The Verge.

https://www.theverge.com/science/1017443/spacex-starlink-ukraine-elon-musk-monopoly

The iPhone Duo should have been an iPad

Vergecast hosts David Pierce and Nilay Patel are pictured with an iPhone Duo.

We gave the iPhone Duo a 7 /10. But that wasn’t always the score we planned, and it might not be the right score forever. Such are the challenges of reviewing – and assessing – a big, new idea about the most popular smartphone in history.

On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay debate whether the Duo deserved the score it got, and try to work through how this device might change over time. Is the outer screen, as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber suggested, the worst iPhone ever? Would it be a better product if it started as an iPad rather than an iPhone? Would we feel differently about this thing if it were simply called the iPad Du …

Read the full story at The Verge.

https://www.theverge.com/podcast/1017447/iphone-duo-ipad-review-score-vergecast

Now Google says it might use your Gmail and Google Photos data to target ads

Google has updated its privacy policy in a way that could mean you’ll start seeing targeted ads based on your personal data if you’re using personalized AI features. The update, spotted by Android Authority, adds an exception to its promise about not using your Drive, Gmail, or Google Photos for personalized ads. While the previous version simply said it wouldn’t do that, as of October 16th, Google has added the line, “unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads.”

That means anyone who has connected their Drive, Gmail, or Google Photos to AI Mode and other Search tools …

Read the full story at The Verge.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/1017600/google-personal-intelligence-privacy-policy-ads-update

Knicks sent employees fake offer of championship rings in phishing test: Report

“Ring orders, designs, and measurements can take time, and not every coaching staff for every defending champion gets its rings on ring night… The Knicks assistants were told they would receive championship rings eventually, but many longtime employees at Madison Square Garden, including some who work in the Knicks’ business operations, will not receive rings at all, team sources told The Athletic,” Vardon wrote.

MSG employee hopes were raised “at the end of September when the Knicks sent an email to a long list of employees, which gave recipients a first glimpse at their would-be championship rings,” Vardon wrote. The email included “a graphic of two differently styled rings” that the lucky employees could supposedly choose from, the article said.

“(Employee name), this one is on the house. MSG is issuing a complimentary employee championship ring. The same jeweler, the same craftsmanship, personalized with your name. No cost to you,” the email said. “There are two designs to choose from: Championship Gold and Garden Classic. Reserve the one you want below.”

Vardon wrote that “multiple team sources” confirmed the email was a phishing test. It’s not clear how many employees clicked the link, and it wasn’t immediately clear how many employees will eventually get some type of championship ring.

We contacted the Madison Square Garden Sports organization with these questions and received a statement after this article was published. The statement called the phishing test “an unfortunate mistake,” and detailed plans to give rings to staff.

MSG’s statement said the company “sent out an email to its corporate team as a simulation of a phishing attack designed to strengthen our security against hackers. MSG was recently hacked and extorted using an employee login and password obtained through a similar phishing attack. Using the rings as a lure to gain employees’ attention was an unfortunate mistake.”

As for the ring-distribution plan, MSG said it “is gifting more than 275 championship rings and jewelry to players, coaches, employees and other members of the Knicks family, worth more than $3.7 million, in recognition of their contributions and celebrating this achievement.”

This article was updated with MSG’s statement.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/knicks-sent-employees-fake-offer-of-championship-rings-in-phishing-test-report/

The first broken iPhone Duos are here

An iPhone Duo is shown opened, with bright lines along the hinge and the right side of the display.

The iPhone Duo officially goes on sale today, but a few units already have broken screens. According to posts on Reddit about the affected units, the issue appears to be happening at a similar spot on all of them: Some kind of problem shows up on the inner screen along the hinge and a strange bright line (or lines) across the right side of the display.

Here’s how one user in Australia described what happened to their phone:

Had my iPhone Duo for about six hours and had probably opened it fewer than 20 times.

I was showing it to a friend, and as I opened it, I felt something around the internal hinge, underneath the screen.

As I cont …

Read the full story at The Verge.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/1017623/iphone-duo-broken-cracked-screen

U.S. Banks Detect Unauthorized AI Agents Accessing Accounts

Unauthorized third-party AI agents are accessing banks in the United States, with some attempting to act independent of user instructions.

Major U.S. banks have detected this activity and have warned that differentiating legitimate customer activity from autonomous AI agents with credentials is a challenge. As a result, many institutions are limiting third-party AI access or restricting agents to read-only permissions.

Below, security leaders share their concerns and insights.

Security Leaders Weigh In

John Strand, Owner, Black Hills Information Security:

This is a real gap in traditional penetration testing. Financial institutions often have very clearly defined lines that testers cannot cross, and gaining access to actual customer accounts is usually off-limits. For good reason.

Good testing firms work with the institution to set up dedicated test accounts and controls so those attack paths can still be evaluated safely. But that approach isn’t applied consistently, and restrictions intended to protect customers can leave a security blind spot if there’s no safe way to test those paths.

Attackers don’t have those restrictions. Neither do the AI agents they deploy. They don’t care about your scope or your rules of engagement. If there’s a weakness in how someone can gain access to a financial account, they’re going to try to exploit it.

I suspect we’ll see more of these attacks as ransomware groups and nation-state actors use AI to test those paths at scale. Authentication and account access need to be tested more thoroughly. Keeping customer accounts out of scope cannot mean leaving the controls protecting those accounts untested.

Ted Miracco, CEO, Approov:

There is no “machine gone rogue” in this story. There are only irresponsible people handing banking credentials to AI software, and vendors shipping agents that ask for them. Both are human decisions and both should carry the financial consequences; however, right now neither clearly does.

We are building agents to impersonate customers and then using shared credentials which means a bank cannot tell an authorized agent from an attacker using the exact same login. That is more of an identity failure than an AI failure. Until agents carry verifiable identities, scoped permissions and an audit trail, blocking them is the best defensible control a bank has.

John Carberry, Solution Sleuth, Xcape Inc.:

The business impact is the collision between open banking mandates and credential-driven artificial intelligence automation, creating immediate fraud and compliance risks for financial institutions. AI companies are aggressively deploying products designed to parse through financial records, which has directly led to this situation where automated tools operate with delegated credentials. While sensationalized as rogue agents, the technical reality is that consumers are willingly handing over access to third-party tools that execute poorly scoped workflows. Security leaders must differentiate between authenticated human sessions and automated toolchains by enforcing API-based access controls and rate limiting. Prioritize transitioning away from legacy credential sharing by accelerating Section 1033 compliant OAuth flows and restricting unauthorized bots to read-only access. Defenders should anticipate this exact threat model migrating quickly to other sectors: healthcare records are next, as similar AI parsing products already exist in that space.

Critical Takeaways:

AI tools parsing financial records are driving an increase in automated, credential-based access that traditional controls struggle to identify.
Banks must deprecate legacy credential sharing and accelerate API-based, read-only OAuth flows.
The healthcare sector is the next immediate target for these autonomous data-parsing agents due to the proliferation of similar AI products

If you think the financial bots are bad, wait until they start diagnosing your medical history.

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/102690-us-banks-detect-unauthorized-ai-agents-accessing-accounts

In Other News: Tor Exit Relays Hijacked, Banks Spot Rogue AI Agents, Self-Rebuilding macOS Ransomware

Noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar: Russia’s APT28 hit NATO defense firms, PingCAP source code stolen, ShinyHunters negotiator probe.

The post In Other News: Tor Exit Relays Hijacked, Banks Spot Rogue AI Agents, Self-Rebuilding macOS Ransomware appeared first on SecurityWeek.

https://www.securityweek.com/in-other-news-tor-exit-relays-hijacked-banks-spot-rogue-ai-agents-self-rebuilding-macos-ransomware/

Frequenze TLC, lo spauracchio Starlink è eccessivo?

Oggi apriamo con i timori della industry delle TLC di un ingresso di Starlink nella gara frequenze.
La minaccia dell’operatore satellitare agitata dal presidente Asstel Pietro Labriola è esagerata? Sembra più realistica l’ipotesi che rilevi direttamente un operatore.
Sul fronte della fibra, FiberCop riceve una doccia gelata dall’Agcom: i nuovi listini da rifare. Piove sul bagnato dopo la segnalazione Ue a KKR per le informazioni fuorvianti prima dello scorporo di NetCo.
Infine, in tema di guerre stellari, Il comparto mondiale delle armi anti-satellite valeva 4,3 miliardi di dollari nel 2025 e, secondo Global Market Insights, salirà a 10,6 miliardi entro il 2035.

Per leggere tutte le news della dailyletter clicca qui.

The post Frequenze TLC, lo spauracchio Starlink è eccessivo? appeared first on Key4biz.

https://www.key4biz.it/frequenze-tlc-lo-spauracchio-starlink-e-eccessivo/591838/