The Latest

Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos:

Week in review

OWASP Agent Memory Guard: Stop AI agents from being weaponized through their own memory
Agent Memory Guard is an open-source runtime defense layer that sits between an agent and its memory store, screening every read and write through a pipeline of detectors and a YAML policy. The project is the OWASP reference implementation for ASI06, Memory Poisoning, one entry in the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications.

Data discovery gaps that catch enterprises off guard
In this interview with Help Net Security, Avani Desai, CEO at Schellman, talks about the gap between what organizations think they know about their data and what discovery scans turn up. She shares stories of shadow data in abandoned cloud storage, post-merger surprises where duplicated datasets slowed integration, and why synthetic data is overmarketed while confidential computing stays underappreciated.

Zero trust physical security needs trust decisions at the edge
In this interview with Help Net Security, Chuck Davis, VP, Global Information Security at Hikvision, explains how zero trust applies to physical security systems like cameras and door controllers. He breaks down how to make trust decisions at the edge without recreating old perimeter assumptions, why these devices should be treated as IT assets, and what the Mirai botnet taught the industry.

A small Slovenian team handles 6,000 cyber incidents a year
Online fraud complaints, ransomware cases, and phishing tips reach Slovenia’s national cyber response center in steady volume, and a team of around a dozen analysts sorts through them. Gorazd Božič, who manages SI-CERT at the public agency ARNES, described that work in an interview conducted in person at the Span Cyber Security Arena conference. He put the original proposal for a Slovenian CERT to ARNES leadership in 1994, and the center now records about 6,000 incidents a year, up from roughly 300 ten to fifteen years earlier.

Only 11% of production agents pass the AI agent security bar
Enterprise teams are running AI agents that write code, drive browsers, answer customer calls, manage cloud infrastructure, and query data warehouses with standing credentials. A new independent assessment of 100 production agents finds that nearly all of them carry the conditions for a single hostile document to take them over.

Spotless compliance evidence can still hide a broken control
In this interview with Help Net Security, Marc Rubbinaccio, Head of Cybersecurity and Compliance at Secureframe, explains where security teams go wrong when preparing for CMMC and FedRAMP 20x. The conversation covers how organizations check the 110 requirements but miss the 320 assessment objectives beneath them, why spotless SOC 2 evidence can hide a broken control, and how continuous monitoring is changing compliance work.

OAuth marketplace apps keep access after publishers vanish
Installing an app from the Google Workspace Marketplace or GitHub Marketplace can grant a third party access to company email, files, calendars, code repositories, CI workflows, organization settings, and secrets. Marketplace presence gives these apps the appearance of approval. The OAuth grants behind them often reach into business systems beyond the listed function.

Thieves can pull off keyless car theft in under a minute and here’s how to stop them
A keyless car can be stolen in under a minute. Two people, a pair of cheap radio amplifiers, and a fob sitting on a hallway table inside the house. That is enough. No broken glass. No alarm. No sound. The vulnerability runs across the global market. Germany’s largest auto club, ADAC, runs ongoing tests of keyless models against relay attacks.

AgentGG: Open-source agentic SAST scanner
Static analysis tools have spent years matching source code against known-bad patterns and handing engineers long lists of candidate issues to triage by hand. AgentGG approaches the same job with AI agents that read the code, follow imports, walk the call graph, and confirm a finding before they report it. The project is an open-source agentic SAST scanner released under the Apache 2.0 license.

Hackers are exploiting Palo Alto GlobalProtect VPN authentication bypass (CVE-2026-0257)
Authentication bypass vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-0257) in Palo Alto Networks’ firewalls that the company disclosed on May 13 have been targeted in “limited exploit attempts”. The good news, though, is that the company hasn’t observed any indication of successful lateral movement from the devices.

How NIST fumbled management of the National Vulnerability Database
A US federal watchdog has outlined how the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) failed to effectively manage the growing backlog of unprocessed cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD).

Windows Netlogon RCE exploited, domain controllers at risk (CVE-2026-41089)
CVE-2026-41089, a critical Windows Netlogon RCE flaw that allows remote code execution, is now actively exploited in the wild, the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) warned last Friday. CVE-2026-41089 is a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in Windows Netlogon, the service and protocol that handles authentication and security within a Windows domain environment.

Google fixes actively exploited Android vulnerability (CVE-2025-48595)
Google has announced the June 2026 Android security updates, which fix a bucketload of vulnerabilities, including a high-severity vulnerability (CVE-2025-48595) in the Android Framework that “may be under limited, targeted exploitation.”

Autonomous AI-driven worm can reason its way through corporate networks
Researchers at the University of Toronto, the Vector Institute, and the University of Cambridge have built and tested a proof-of-concept AI-driven worm that does not operate on a fixed list of exploits. Instead, it analyzes each target it encounters, reasons about how to attack it, and creates a strategy on the fly, all with the help of a small, free large language model (LLM) running directly on machines it has already compromised.

Cisco SD-WAN 0-day exploited, no patch available (CVE-2026-20245)
A 0-day privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2026-20245) in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager that has yet to be patched by Cisco is being leveraged by attackers.

June 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast: Where are the CVEs?
Forecast from last month was only partly right. After the Anthropic Mythos announcements and the deluge of newly discovered vulnerabilities from vendors like Mozilla, Microsoft’s updates were standard fare, 65 CVEs reported in Windows 11 and 58 in Windows 10.

The modern-day business can learn a lot about risk from this year’s mega events
Every year brings its share of global events, but 2026 is proving to be a banner year for mega-scale entertainment. The year got off to a roaring start with the Winter Olympics, and now anticipation is building for the fast-approaching FIFA World Cup. But amid the buzz, have you ever paused to consider the staggering level of risk inherent to such large-scale events? Or how impressive it is that organizers are able to manage that risk so successfully?

From critical to controlled: Cutting vulnerabilities in a live manufacturing environment
A vulnerability scanner flags a critical CVSS 10 vulnerability on an industrial asset. The report lands in the boss’ inbox and now he wants to know why we’re sitting on a critical vulnerability. In a normal IT environment, you patch it then close the ticket and call it a day. If, however, you’re in OT or dealing with ICS in a live manufacturing facility, it’s rarely that simple.

Why you need BAS and autonomous pentesting together
A new autonomous penetration testing tool delivers impressive results at first—finding critical issues, uncovering undocumented attack paths, and exposing forgotten accounts. But by the fourth or fifth run, the discoveries dry up. The tool keeps reporting the same stale issues, and the dashboard becomes another source of noise. What seemed like continuous validation quietly turns into a repeat of the same well-worn attack paths.

Governing shadow AI without killing innovation
In this Help Net Security video, Alan Snyder, CEO at NowSecure, talks about governing shadow AI without stopping innovation. He frames the problem as two opposing forces. Companies need to adopt AI fast because attackers and competitors will outpace them otherwise, but they also need to do it safely.

What CISOs need to do about post-quantum migration in the next 24 months
In this Help Net Security video, Garfield Jones, SVP Global Strategy and Research, QuSecure, lays out what CISOs should do over the next 24 months. A recent Google paper moved the expected arrival of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer from 2035 to 2029, leaving organizations about two and a half years to prepare.

AI agent governance gets harder when agents outnumber your people
In this Help Net Security video, Amit Gautam, CTO at Abluva, explains the security risks that autonomous AI agents bring into enterprise environments.

EU organizations buckle under rising compliance pressure
Cybersecurity governance in the EU is shifting under expanding frameworks such as NIS2 and DORA, while AI raises new questions for security teams. What the future brings is hard to predict, and organizations must find a way to cope. Antonija Vojnović, Governance, Risk and Compliance Department Manager at Span, spoke with Help Net Security at the Span Cyber Security Arena conference about how these regulatory frameworks are shaping compliance priorities and day-to-day decision-making.

DNS-AID lets AI agents find and verify each other through DNS
AI agents run across many platforms, and each one needs a way to locate and confirm the identity of the others it works with. The Linux Foundation’s DNS-AID project gives them that capability through the Domain Name System, the same address lookup system that has directed internet traffic for decades. The project lets AI agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers use DNS as a global, vendor-neutral directory for publishing, discovering, and verifying one another.

Brute-force attack triggers Dashlane account lockouts
Password manager Dashlane has confirmed that a brute-force attack targeting user accounts triggered temporary account suspensions and authentication issues. The company first acknowledged the incident on May 31 after users reported receiving account suspension emails and experiencing login problems.

Meta tries to get ahead of scammers before the World Cup begins
Football fans are counting down the days until the FIFA World Cup begins, and scammers are doing the same. Last week, the FBI warned that cybercriminals are spoofing FIFA websites to steal personal information, sell fake tickets, and promote fraudulent hospitality packages ahead of the tournament.

Sensitive government personnel data posted online, Spanish police arrest suspect
The Spanish National Police arrested a man in Granada for allegedly leaking personal data belonging to members of several sensitive state institutions.

64,000 accounts exposed in breach of GTA V cheat service Atlas Menu
Atlas Menu, a cheat service for Grand Theft Auto V and Counter-Strike 2, has been added to the Have I Been Pwned database following a data breach that exposed tens of thousands of user records. The incident exposed approximately 64,000 accounts, including email addresses, usernames, IP addresses, support tickets, and passwords hashed with bcrypt.

Anthropic expands Project Glasswing to 150 organizations in more than 15 countries
Anthropic is expanding Project Glasswing, its cybersecurity initiative built around the Claude Mythos Preview model, by adding about 150 organizations following several weeks of work with its initial group of partners, security firms, open-source maintainers, and government agencies.

Malware campaign targeting Minecraft users infects over 116,000 systems
A Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) operation named WeedHack is targeting Minecraft users and allows threat actors to gain remote access to victims’ screens, webcams, and files through a web-based dashboard, McAfee researchers found.

Microsoft responds to security challenges facing code, AI agents, and models
Microsoft has introduced a series of security tools and capabilities focused on AI-driven vulnerability discovery, AI agents, and AI models. The updates include a multi-agent vulnerability discovery system, new controls for managing and securing AI agents, data protection capabilities, and tools designed to identify potentially vulnerable or compromised AI models before deployment.

AI is helping low-skill hackers pull off advanced cyberattacks
Anthropic has published an analysis of cyber-related misuse of its AI systems, examining 832 accounts that were banned for malicious cyber activity between March 2025 and March 2026. The company mapped the observed behavior to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, which documents tactics and techniques used by attackers.

Attackers obtained encrypted password vaults from some Dashlane user accounts
Dashlane has disclosed new details about a brute-force attack that let a threat actor access some customer accounts and copy encrypted vaults. Dashlane said it found no evidence that the attackers compromised its internal systems. The company first acknowledged the incident on May 31 after users reported receiving account suspension emails and experiencing login problems.

145 AI laws passed in 2025 and privacy teams aren’t catching a break
145 AI-related laws were enacted by state legislatures in 2025, and more than 1,000 additional bills were introduced or revised, according to DataGrail’s Privacy and AI Trends Report 2026.

NVIDIA goes open source with a big batch of physical AI agent tools
NVIDIA just dropped a big batch of open-source “physical AI” skills and tools, and they’re designed to make a roboticist’s life a whole lot easier. The idea? Take the messy, complicated work behind robots, self-driving cars, vision AI, and industrial digital twins, and break it into bite-sized tasks that AI agents can actually run themselves.

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management gets a smarter exposure score
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management’s updated exposure score model adds vulnerability risk signals and asset context to help teams understand where risk is concentrated and which remediation actions are likely to have the greatest impact. The model is available in public preview.

This AI model backdoor attack stays hidden until you customize the model
Most teams that deploy AI start with a backbone model. They download a large pre-trained system, adapt it to a specific task, and put it into production. The download step carries a security question: the origin of the model. A research team built an attack called BadBone. It plants a backdoor inside a backbone model. Downstream tasks that adapt the model inherit the backdoor. The name points at the target. Corrupt the skeleton, and systems built on top of it carry the flaw.

OpenAI brings frontier AI to existing AWS environments
OpenAI frontier models and Codex are now available on AWS, giving customers access to OpenAI capabilities within AWS environments and the controls needed to move more quickly from evaluation to deployment. These capabilities are available through OpenAI models on Amazon Bedrock, a platform for building generative AI applications and agents at production scale. The platform enables teams to build AI applications using AWS-native security and governance controls.

KDE Linux security audit cuts kernel modules and unused packages
KDE Linux, the in-progress operating system from the KDE community, removed several kernel modules and software packages after a security audit of the components shipped with the system. The work followed the discovery of multiple security issues in the upstream Linux kernel during the prior month.

Codex knowledge work expands into research, reports, and spreadsheets
Office workers in the United States lose hours each week to email triage and to searching for files spread across disconnected systems. Roughly 40 percent of US labor, about 72 million people, works primarily with information such as analysis, documents, designs, and communication. Research from the McKinsey Global Institute puts the average knowledge worker at 28 percent of the workweek on email and close to 20 percent on hunts for internal information or for colleagues who can help with specific tasks.

Meta adds stricter guardrails for teen feeds
Meta has expanded its Teen Accounts 13+ content settings globally on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger. The safeguards are designed to help young users see age-appropriate content by default. The company also introduced Limited Content on Instagram for parents seeking stricter restrictions. Meta plans to roll out the feature on Facebook and Messenger later this year.

Known vulnerabilities behind most application security incidents
Eight in ten organizations took an application security hit during the past year tied to a vulnerability their team had already cataloged, according to a survey of 902 IT and security professionals conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance. The pattern points to a structural condition across the industry, where the window between identifying a flaw and closing it in production stays open long enough for attackers to act.

Agent Threat Rules: Open detection rule format for AI agent security threats
AI agents run inside coding assistants, MCP servers, and multi-agent frameworks, and the access that makes them useful also opens paths to prompt injection, tool poisoning, and credential theft. Public CVE feeds carry agent-execution flaws that reach production faster than the tooling built to catch them. Agent Threat Rules, or ATR, is an open detection format aimed at this category of attack.

Microsoft Scout agent opens a new category of always-on Autopilots
Workplace AI assistants have mostly waited for a prompt before doing anything. A user asks, the tool answers, and the exchange ends there. Microsoft is putting a different kind of agent inside its Office applications, one designed to keep operating in the background once a person stops paying attention. The company introduced Microsoft Scout, calling it the first entry in a category it labels Autopilots.

New Android feature promises to spot deepfake scam calls
Android is introducing fake call detection to help protect users from impersonation scams. The feature can detect and flag suspected spoofed calls when both parties use Phone by Google on Android 12 or later. It will roll out globally this month, starting with Pixel devices.

ETSI sets security requirements for AI data centers and cloud platforms
ETSI has published TS 104 033, a technical specification that defines security requirements for AI computing platforms. The specification establishes a security framework for platforms used to host AI applications in data center and edge computing environments, covering security functions, platform components, interfaces, and services designed to protect AI models, datasets, training processes, and inference workloads.

Product showcase: Trend Micro Mobile Security detects scams in messages, QR codes, and websites
Trend Micro Mobile Security for iOS protects devices from potentially harmful websites while browsing, blocks ads and personal information trackers, helps users avoid unsafe Wi-Fi networks, and monitors data usage. The app is available for both iOS and Android devices.

Most pros have seen AI hallucinations in IT operations
Autonomous AI is taking action inside enterprise IT environments. Software is restarting services, isolating risky devices, and applying patches without waiting for a human to approve the step. The capability is spreading at the same time IT professionals are reporting frequent encounters with AI output errors that can carry operational impact.

Let’s Encrypt works toward post-quantum certificates at web scale
Let’s Encrypt plans to pursue a post-quantum-safe Web PKI through Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs), a new approach that adds post-quantum authentication to the web without sacrificing the speed and reliability that have made TLS universal. The project is targeting late 2026 for a staging environment that issues MTCs, with a production-ready environment planned for 2027.

Photos: Infosecurity Europe 2026
Infosecurity Europe 2026 is a cybersecurity event that took place from June 2 to 4 in London. Help Net Security was on-site and here’s a closer look at the conference.

Attackers already know the secrets are on your developers’ machines. Do you?
In a recent GitGuardian analysis, an average of 150 secrets were found on a sample of developer endpoints. Private keys accounted for 38% of unique secrets, while cloud, identity provider, and secret management credentials (AWS IAM, Hashicorp vault) added another 22%.

Simplify security management with CIS SecureSuite Platform
CIS SecureSuite Membership simplifies the process with tools, benefits, and resources for implementing the secure recommendations of the CIS Benchmarks. With the release of CIS SecureSuite Platform, it’s now even easier for Members to harden their systems.

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: June 2, 2026
We’ve scoured the market to bring you a selection of roles that span various skill levels within the cybersecurity field. Check out this weekly selection of cybersecurity jobs available right now.

New infosec products of the week: June 5, 2026
Here’s a look at the most interesting products from the past week, featuring releases from Asimily, depthfirst, Diligent, Hyland, MazeBolt, and Noma.


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One advantage of an unobtrusive fitness tracker like the Fitbit Air is that you can wear it at the same time as another watch without looking like you’re wearing two watches. Some Fitbit Air owners have taken this to another level by combining the Fitbit and a mechanical watch on the same band. Here’s how to do it—but be warned that you may not be happy with the result. 

How to fit a Fitbit Air and a watch onto the same band

Combinations of the Fitbit Air and a mechanical watch are all over forums like Reddit. Here are some examples so you can see how it looks on a few different watches. To do this maneuver, here’s what you’ll need: 

A Fitbit Air in its standard nylon band (the one that comes in the box with it—no need to buy a different band). The Fitbit Air requires its own special strap, so you can’t do this trick with a regular leather watch band. I’m recommending the nylon band because the Active band is too thick to fit, and the Elevated Modern band is to stiff to be practical. (I tested all three.) 

A watch with at least 18 millimeters between the lugs. This is because the Fitbit Air’s band is 18 mm. Most watch bands are at least 18 mm, but some are much larger—this is going to look silly on a 24-millimeter watch. Note that you need the standard type of lug that takes a spring-loaded pin. Unfortunately this will not work with specialty connectors like what’s on the Apple Watch. 

Spring pins to fit the watch. Since you likely have a watch band already, in theory you can just pull the pins out of the band. This is easier to do on some bands than others, though. If you don’t want to mess with your good watch bands, you can buy pins or steal them from a spare band. Note that these need to match the size of your watch, not the 18-mm size of the Fitbit band.

I don’t have a mechanical watch on hand, but I have plenty of smartwatches, so I experimented on some Garmin Forerunners I had at hand. Here are the steps: 

  1. Remove the band from your watch.

  2. Lay the Fitbit Air band across the back of the watch, making sure the outside of the band faces the back of the watch.

  3. Install the spring pins into the holes in the watch lugs, making sure that the Fitbit Air band gets sandwiched in between the pin and watch.

  4. Slide the Fitbit band as needed so that the Fitbit Air device will be on the bottom of your wrist when the watch is on top. 

Why combining a Fitbit air with your watch may not work for you

After trying this with several watches, I’m honestly not impressed. This setup seems like it should work (a strap is a strap, after all) but there are some issues. 

First is sizing: If you have a small wrist you may not have enough room for the watch, the Fitbit device, and the band’s closure to all be in appropriate places. Without a watch, my Fitbit Air’s band has several inches of contact between the two sides of the hook-and-loop closure. With a watch threaded onto the band, the watch takes up some of that space, leaving part of the strap as a loose-hanging flap. 

What may work better—although I haven’t tried it—is a third-party adapter like this to position the Fitbit Air under your regular watch band. This option looks bulky and I can’t say it looks ideal, but perhaps worth trying. 

Another problem is comfort and accuracy of the Fitbit when worn on the bottom of the wrist. I haven’t tested the Fitbit for accuracy in this position, but typically the bottom of the wrist is a less reliable place for optical heart rate sensors to read your pulse. And as thin and narrow as the Fitbit Air device is, it’s kind of long. I don’t find it particularly comfortable to wear on a watch band this way. 

You’ll also have to forgo any sensor that might be on the back of your watch. This strap hack covers up the back, so you can’t wear a Fitbit and a Garmin together if you want the Garmin to be able to pick up your heart rate, HRV, or blood oxygen.

That’s a lot of caveats for a simple hack. I won’t be wearing my Fitbit Air this way. But if your wrist is just the right size relative to your strap, you find it comfortable, you don’t mind a gap if your lugs are more than 18 millimeters apart, and you don’t care about getting the very best accuracy from your Fitbit’s heart rate sensor, this may be a convenient way to keep from wearing a second wristband.


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Letterboxd has created a cozy online space for film lovers to get together—those who truly appreciate the art form, and who want to compile lists, aggregate ratings, and share their movie opinions with others. Its success has led to other similar platforms appearing in its slipstream, such as Binge.

Record Club, which actually first opened its doors a couple of years ago, is continuing to grow and getting more attention as a potential Letterboxd for music enthusiasts. Music has been a major part of my life since my teens—across cassette tapes, CDs, MP3s, and streaming services—so I was keen to give it a try.

The snap verdict after a few days: It definitely gets a lot right, from the elegant look of the interface to the depth you can go down to when it comes to logging the details of your listening history. If you're looking for somewhere to share your music tastes and track your listening, it's worth a look.

Record Club is free to use with no ads, with a $4-per-month subscription available if you want to support the project. You get some extras such as better list management and the ability to choose preferred cover art in your library. You also get extensive personalized stats, and the ability to add personalized notes to releases.

Record Club is easy to navigate

When you first sign up for Record Club, you'll be given a quick tour of the interface and the features, and it's a well laid-out app on both web and mobile: There's lots of white space and text that's crisp and bold, and it's easy to read. Right away, you can see what's popular with other users, new releases coming up, and reviews that have been left on the platform.

Click through on any album, and you get a bunch of information about it. There's the track listing, plus details on how popular the album is on the Record Club network (its average rating and number of listeners, as well as reviews). You can see when it was originally released, and its total running time.

Everything is very clickable, searchable, and social. Follow a link to another user (you'll be given suggestions for who to follow as soon as you get started), and you get to see what they're currently listening to, their top five records, the reviews they've left on releases, and which upcoming releases they're planning to listen to.

Record Club
You'll find all the music you listen to on Record Club. Credit: Lifehacker

Your own profile will be viewable by default: You can make changes to it by clicking on your avatar (top right), then choosing Settings > Profile. Switch to Preferences and you get to control some of the ways that Record Club works, and under Privacy you can choose what's shown on your profile, or make it private (so only people who know your username will be able to find you).

You can bring previous listening data over from Rate Your Music or Last.fm (which I'm a particular fan of), and imports from Spotify are apparently coming soon. Your Record Club data can be exported as and when needed, so you don't have to worry about your listening history staying trapped here forever.

The headers along the top of the web interface link to the key sections of the platform: Browse (for checking out new music), Community (for checking out what other listeners are up to), and Activity (for reviewing your own listening). It's really when you start to use the tracking and social features of Record Club that it really comes into its own though, and when the Letterboxd comparisons become most apt.

How to get started with Record Club

You can start sharing what you're listening to by heading to the Record Club home page and clicking Add release under Your rotation. Your rotation is where you log what you're currently listening to, and you can have five albums (or singles or EPs) here—if you try and add a sixth, something else will have to go.

Finding new music couldn't be any easier: Type the name of the artist and album, and it'll quickly pop up. You don't have to keep music titles in your rotation pile to tell Record Club that you've listened to them, as you can click the three dots on any cover art across the site and choose Listen to log it.

There's also Queue for music you want to listen to but haven't done yet, and the option to leave a rating or a review. I tend to leave ratings much more often than reviews, as they're easier: I'm usually agonizing over the right words to say in a review and the right tone to take, and then I end up not publishing it anyway.

Record Club
List-making is one of the key features of Record Club. Credit: Lifehacker

It didn't take me long to log a lot of listening through the Record Club interface, as there were always related links and recommendations that took me where I wanted to go next. There's also the option to use tags if you want to be more specific in the way you're organizing your music collection.

If you head to your profile page by clicking your avatar (top right) and then Profile, you get your very own top five albums of all time to show off—just click Edit next to the relevant section to make your choices. One neat touch: If you click the three dots by the top five, you can save these picks as an image, so you can share them on other platforms as well.

I like making lists, too. Click Create up at the top of the web interface and you're able to choose List to start making some public or private lists. You can organize your favorite albums in a particular genre, a starter pack of songs for a specific band, the best double albums in history, or whatever it is you want to list.


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In a genre dominated by grim, dystopian visions of the future, For All Mankind is a powerful counterweight: an alternate history that imagines a timeline in which the Soviet Union beat America to the Moon, prolonging the space race and laying the foundation for a more egalitarian, tech-forward 20th and 21st centuries.

If you've finished the recently completed fifth season and need more of that kind of sci-fi positivity, you’re probably already excited about the spin-off series Star City, and you’ve probably already made your way through our list of shows with similar vibes to watch. Hence, it's time to explore other media. Here are the best movies, books, games, and podcasts with similarly starry-eyed vibes.

The best books like For All Mankind

For All Mankind is a dense, novelistic series with deep world-building and terrific character work—which means a good book is your best bet for filling that rocket-shaped void in your life.

The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal

This award-winning novel, the start of a series, is the ideal book to read if you love For All Mankind. It’s an alternate history that imagines a devastating meteorite impact that almost ends civilization and sends the world careening toward environmental disaster. In the desperate effort to recover and save humanity, manpower shortages mean women step into roles they were traditionally barred from, including the race to the stars. Despite the cataclysm that opens the story, this is the kind of optimistic sci-fi that imagines humanity will rise to every occasion, and fans of the show will love it.

The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe

If your favorite parts of For All Mankind involved the terrifying training for, and experience of spaceflight, especially in the early seasons, this legendary work of “new journalism” is the ticket. It recounts the early work in the U.S. on rocket-powered aircraft, Project Mercury, and the first astronauts, detailing the incredibly challenging and dangerous work undertaken by these men. It also delves into the impact their careers had on their families, and offers real-world background that makes the experience of the show even richer.

The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

If you loved the way Mars colonization is depicted in For All Mankind—that grounded, plausible approach that makes it all seem thrillingly possible—check out Robinson’s Nebula and Hugo award-winning series. It shares the same basic optimism, imagining a reality where the world, driven by looming ecological disaster, comes together to terraform and colonize Mars. It’s got a similar scope, spanning nearly two centuries of future history beginning in the year 2026,offering an intelligent view of what a project of that scale would involve.

Singer Distance, by Ethan Chatagnier

One thing missing from For All Mankind is alien life—unless you count the microscopic cells discovered on Saturn’s moon Titan. If you wished there were some E.T.s in the show to spice things up, Chatagnier’s novel will thrill you, revealing as it does in a world where humanity began a laborious communication with Martians in 1894, involving enormous glyphs carved into the Martian surface and some heavy-duty math. When humanity fails to solve the Martian equations, the red planet falls silent for decades, until a brilliant young student formulates a message that reopens the conversation, with world-changing consequences.

Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Part of the charm of For All Mankind is in the characters and their relationships. For more of that vibe, Atmosphere is the right choice. In the early 1980s, astrophysicist Joan Goodwin is thrilled when NASA announces an initiative to recruit female scientists into its space program. Training to be an astronaut is challenging and rewarding—and so are the relationships she forges with her fellow recruits. Not everyone is a friend and not everything is perfect—and a looming disaster in 1984 that puts a shadow on everything—but the story celebrates exceptional people and humanity’s enormous potential in a way fans of the show will recognize.

The best movies like For All Mankind

One of the great things about For All Mankind is the combination of small-scale human drama and the mind-blowing vistas of outer space. For big-screen versions of that, check out these films.

Apollo 13 (1995)

The thrills found in the early seasons of For All Mankind were typically centered on the incredibly dangerous initial attempts to blast off Earth and head to the Moon and beyond. Apollo 13 captures the real-world drama and tension of the 1970 Moon mission that went terribly wrong, stranding three astronauts in a disabled lunar module and prompting a desperate effort on Earth to solve a litany of physics challenges and get them home alive. It’s the perfect choice if you’re jonesing for space race pathos. Rent Apollo 13 on Prime Video.

The Martian (2015)

Space is a pretty dangerous place, as are the other planets in our solar system. The Martian captures both the wonder of exploration and the human drive to survive and triumph over adversity that marks For All Mankind as a special show, telling the story of astronaut Mark Watney, marooned on Mars with insufficient resources for long-term survival. It’s tense, thrilling, and ultimately a celebration of the human spirit, as the world puts aside political differences and comes together to mount a massive rescue mission. Stream The Martian on Fubo or rent it on Prime Video.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

It’s entirely earthbound and has a very different aesthetic—not so much realistic as "computer-generated retrofuturism"—but Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow captures the gee-whiz, let’s do this energy of For All Mankind while also envisioning an alternate history where humanity develops technology along vastly different lines. There are airships, giant robots, and a flying legion of old-school fighter planes in this universe, which is deeply indebted to 1930s sci-fi aesthetics, but under all the CGI flash is a celebration of humanity’s courage and resilience that fans of the show will love. Stream Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow on Hoopla or rent it on Prime Video.

First Man (2018)

Another film exploring the incredible courage and determination of the early astronauts, First Man focuses on Neil Armstrong (played by Ryan Gosling), the first man on the Moon. In the early 1960s, Armstrong was reeling from the death of his young daughter and entered the Gemini program at a time when the Soviet Union was perceived to be beating the U.S. in the space race. The film explores the deep personal costs to all the men and women connected to the massive project, from lives lost to serious injury and emotional stress, while accurately depicting just how terrifyingly primitive the technology used to get to the Moon actually was. Rent First Man on Prime Video.

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

While Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was trippy and very Kubrick, its 1984 sequel is a lot more grounded and informed by the Cold War. The result is a human-focused spacefaring story that fans of For All Mankind should enjoy. Nine years after the disaster that saw the U.S. lose astronaut David Bowman and the crew of the Discovery, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are racing to get to Jupiter to find out what happened. The Soviets complete their ship first, but need American help to reactivate the computer HAL 9000 onboard the Discovery before the ship crashes into Jupiter’s moon Io, so a tense joint mission is formed. It’s a surprisingly hopeful story with little of the original film’s cold style. Rent 2010: The Year We Make Contact on Prime Video.

The best video games like For All Mankind

Want a more hands-on, challenging experience similar to For All Mankind? Check out these video games that bring space to your console or computer in different, exciting ways.

No Man’s Sky

You want the stars? No Man’s Sky brings you the stars—a nearly infinite supply of them, procedurally generated and teeming with unexpected challenges and opportunities. You can explore, transact business, and get into existential fights with aliens, and you can keep doing it for as long as you like, as the game comes as close to mimicking the infinite nature of the universe as current consoles possibly can. If it’s the potential for humanity to explore the universe that makes you most excited about For All Mankind, this game is for you.

Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Steam

Kerbal Space Program

Love the detailed exploration of the resources, manpower, and problem-solving that goes into managing an enormous space program? Kerbal Space Program and its sequel are the right games for you. The Kerals live on the planet Kerbin, and have just constructed a spaceport. It’s up to you to design rockets and other craft, launch them, and complete missions in the nearby solar system. The physics and planets are modeled on our own and are surprisingly accurate, giving you the opportunity to discover just how hard it is to get a crew to the Moon and back in one piece.

Platforms: Steam

Elite Dangerous

Like No Man’s Sky, Elite Dangerous offers you the chance to explore and interact with the entire universe, fulfilling the implied promise of For All Mankind. Unlike that other game, the universe in Elite Dangerous is modeled on the real one we live in—although the systems you visit are procedurally generated, the data used to create them is taken from legitimate astronomical readings. That means you can explore planets and systems that might actually exist out there, using spaceships and equipment that have the same practical, industrial look and feel as the vessels on the show.

Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Steam

Starfield

Starfield is another open-world space exploration game that mimics the grounded feel and courageous tone of For All Mankind, set in a universe based closely on real physics and known star systems. If you want all that and a tighter story ine than found in other open-world space games, this one will do it: You play as a member of a legendary team of explorers searching for ancient artifacts that may offer clues to one of the greatest discoveries in human history.

Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Steam

Surviving Mars

For many fans, the Mars settlement on For All Mankind is the most fascinating locale—a practical, grounded setting where humanity lives a fairly mundane existence despite the harsh conditions. If you want to dig in deeper to the logistical challenges of keeping humans alive on the red planet, check out Surviving Mars, where you play as an overseer in charge of designing, building, and maintaining a colony on Mars—and making sure the colonists survive their stay. The game throws a lot at you, including different colonist personality traits, disease, resource management, and even rebellions, but that’s what makes it so much fun.

Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Steam

The best podcasts like For All Mankind

For All Mankind has developed a rich, complex fictional universe and cast of characters over the course of its five seasons. If you want a deep dive, more background, or a similar entertainment experience, check out these podcasts.

For All Mankind: The Official Podcast

For All Mankind: The Official Podcast
Credit: Podcast logo

The official Apple TV+ podcast is the perfect spot to get all the background on every episode, the cast and crew, and the specific influences that shaped each storyline. Hearing about the real-life technology and projects that inspired the events depicted in the series is exciting, and getting all the behind-the-scenes tea is why podcasts were invented in the first place. You'll even hear interviews with actual astronauts and astrophysicists.

Happy Valley: A For All Mankind Podcast

Happy Valley: A For All Mankind Podcast
Credit: Podcast logo

If you’d rather vibe with other fans instead of the corporate-sponsored podcast, check out Happy Valley, hosted by superfans Brian Chaney and Donnie Gordon. Listen in on their fascinating discussions of episode breakdowns, fan theories, and the real-world analogues hiding within the show.

Marsfall

Marsfall podcast
Credit: Podcast logo

If you’re obsessed with the Mars-based story on For All Mankind, check out this tense, exciting narrative podcast that follows the adventures of colonists settling on the red planet in the year 2047. It doesn’t pull any punches, depicting the constant life-or-death struggle to survive on a planet that isn’t built for supporting human life.

ars PARADOXICA

ars PARADOXICA
Credit: Podcast logo

If you loved the early seasons of For All Mankind for the way they subvert history (and the gender and race attitudes of the times), check out ars PARADOXICA. This is the story of Dr. Sally Grissom, a scientist who is thrown backwards in time to 1943 and recruited by the Office of Developed Anomalous Resources (ODAR) to work on time travel and other technologies that can help America win World War II and defend itself against the Soviets in the Cold War and beyond, rewriting history in increasingly chaotic ways.

13 Minutes to the Moon

13 Minutes to the Moon
Credit: Podcast logo

Want to know more about the actual 1969 Moon mission and the immense effort required to mount it? This is the podcast for you. Produced by the BBC, it’s a detailed, engrossing delve into the social, political, economic, and technological challenges the effort posed, while illuminating the personalities of the people who fought for funding, developed key tech, or actually sat in the cockpits during dangerous tests and maiden flights during the decade-long, literal moonshot project.


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The Switch 2 has been out for just about one year now. In that time, we've had some new first-party titles, like Donkey Kong Bananza and Mario Kart World; upgrades for older Switch games, to take advantage of the more powerful hardware; and even a price hike, rather than a cut. Now, as we pass the console's first birthday, Nintendo has confirmed it's already working on a new version of the Switch 2. This won't be an OLED variant, mind you, nor will it come with an even faster processor. Instead, the new Switch 2 will bring a useful change to the console's battery—just not for those of us outside of Europe.

Nintendo is making the Switch 2's battery removable

In a statement on its website, Nintendo confirmed that a future version of the Switch 2 will come with a removable battery—an easily removable one, at that. The Switch 2 (and the Switch 1, for that matter) currently encloses the battery within the entire casing of the console, like many other current devices. If you wanted to access the battery, you'd have to take apart the whole handheld, which is far more complicated than it should be. As per iFixit's repair guide, you have to apply heat, remove the covers on each Joy-Con attachment, use picks to pry things open, and remove multiple components just to find the battery. That ignores even having to loosen the adhesive on the battery, remove it, and replace it with a new one, before having to reverse all of the above steps to reassemble your console. What a mess.

An easily removable battery would be a great quality-of-life update here. While unnecessary for the early days of Switch 2 ownership, eventually, the original battery will hold a noticeably smaller charge than it used to. Being able to simply pop out the battery, possibly via its own compartment, and replace it with a new one will go a long way to expanding the console's lifespan.

Nintendo will likely only offer removable Switch 2 batteries in Europe

The bad news is, this new console probably won't arrive for those of us in the U.S.—or outside Europe, for that matter. As it turns out, Nintendo isn't making these changes for the good of its users. Instead, the company is following EU regulations. In that original statement, Nintendo confirms that "batteries integrated into certain appliances and sold in the EU must be easily replaceable by end-users at any time during the lifetime of the product. Nintendo is implementing measures to comply with these requirements by preparing versions of products to meet the Regulation."

While it's possible Nintendo could roll out these new Switch 2's globally, it may make more sense to keep it localized. Since the EU is the only region that requires these changes, it may save the company money to continue selling the current design, and only roll out a limited batch of updated consoles to Europe. It wouldn't be the first to offer EU-specific features and devices to the region. iPhones in the EU, for example, can access alternative app stores, use dedicated third-party browsers, and access third-party NFC payments systems. They even have a dedicated SIM tray, while U.S. iPhones are all-in on eSIM.

That said, never say never. Nintendo could decide to streamline production and simply make these EU changes apply to all new Switch 2 units going forward. If you buy a Switch 2 after Nintendo switches over, you may just benefit from the new design—even if you live in another region. We'll need to see what Nintendo decides to do once it rolls out this new battery design.

When will the new Switch 2 launch?

We don't have a definitive date yet, but we do know the deadline: EU regulations require companies like Nintendo to offer these battery adjustments starting Feb. 18, 2027. Nintendo could launch the console sooner than that, but I imagine we'll know by February whether this new Switch 2 will ship globally, or just to Europe.


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