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Compared to traditional speaker setups, soundbars are an affordable alternative to upgrading your television’s sound without adding clutter to your space. Some, like the Sonos Beam Gen 1 soundbar, also come with built-in voice assistants—and right now, a new Sonos Beam is 46% off on Woot, taking it to $269 (down from $499). According to price tracking tools, this is $30 under its lowest previous price.

Doubling as a wireless home theater and a music speaker, the Sonos Beam has built-in Alexa, letting you control it hands-free and set alarms or check the news and weather.  At 2.7 by 25.7 by 4.0 inches (HWD), it has a small footprint and a streamlined look.

Despite its age—it earned a PCMag “Best of the Year” award way back in 2018—it has held up well as a one-piece sound system that packs audio power into a small package. The Sonos platform supports 50 music streaming services, and the top panel has three touch-sensitive controls for playback, track skipping, and volume. It doesn’t come with a remote control, but it can be configured to work with your TV remote control.

While it can’t simulate directional surround sound, the soundbar has four woofers, three passive radiators, and a single tweeter for immersive and clear audio that fills a room. If you’re looking for a powerful but unobtrusive speaker system, the Sonos Beam Gen 1 soundbar is a reliable option.

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Since early Thursday morning, Bluesky has been experiencing intermittent downtime. It's not unusual for a platform to go through outages, of course. If you check in with Downdetector every now and then, you'll see how often users of websites big and small report issues with the service. In most cases, some bug or small issue has gummed up the works behind the scenes, and it doesn't take long for the platform's engineers locate the problem and issue a fix: downtime over. But that doesn't seem to be the case with Bluesky—at least, not this time.

Bluesky was hit with a DDoS attack

On Thursday at 7:47 p.m., Bluesky posted an update on its official Bluesky page. The post says the reports of outages occurred starting 11:40 p.m. PT on Wednesday (2:40 a.m. ET on Thursday), which the platform attributes to "a sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack." Bluesky says the attack "intensified" throughout Thursday, explaining the up and down nature of the outage.

Our team received a report of intermittent app outages at about 11:40pm PDT on April 15, 2026. They worked through the night to mitigate a sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which intensified throughout the day.

— Bluesky (@bsky.app) April 16, 2026 at 7:47 PM

Now, this doesn't mean Bluesky was necessarily hacked, or that user information was compromised in the attack. In fact, Bluesky confirmed Thursday evening that it had no evidence of unauthorized access to user data. In a DDoS attack, an actor floods a service's network with traffic, to overwhelm that network and cause interruptions to service. It's as if Bluesky was suddenly the platform everyone in the world wanted to go to talk about how you can now block Shorts on YouTube: All that traffic makes it difficult for the website to run properly.

As of this article, Bluesky appears to be fully operational. I have no trouble accessing my feeds on the site, and the Bluesky service status site reports no issues. That said, the company is planning on issuing another update on the attack and its outages by 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) today.

Is there anything Bluesky users need to do?

At this time, the answer appears to be no. Bluesky has said it believes no private user data was accessed, which means your account data is likely secure. However, if the company issues an update to the contrary, I'll be sure to update this piece, and include instructions on what to do to shore up your account's defenses.


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Gemini has long been able to connect to other Google apps, but earlier this year those integrations were made tighter and more seamless with a feature called Personal Intelligence. Now, Personal Intelligence is expanding into Google Photos and picking up AI image creation capabilities, courtesy of the Nano Banana 2 model.

The idea is that you don't have to manually select a picture in Google Photos and tell the AI to do something with it. Instead you just type a prompt such as "create a cartoon showing my family enjoying our favorite activities," and Gemini will do the rest—mining your Google Photos library for the relevant information and people.

Another example prompt Google gives is "create a watercolor image of my dream house nestled in my favorite setting." You can see how the new integrations save you time—you don't have to explain what your dream house or your favorite setting look like, as long as Gemini can work it out from your photos.

"Since this is built into how you normally use the Gemini app there's no extra setup," says Google. "If you've already linked your Google apps, that personal context is ready and waiting the moment you start creating images... the results will automatically reflect your specific tastes and lifestyle, gleaned from the Google apps you've connected to."

The upgraded Personal Intelligence experience is rolling out now inside the Gemini app for users in the U.S., but you need to be a paying customer to access it, on either the AI Plus, AI Pro, or AI Ultra plans. Google says access for more users and support for Gemini inside Chrome is coming soon.

How it works—and how to turn it off

Gemini AI
Get a picture of your family, made in claymation style. Credit: Google

This is being pushed out now to Google AI subscribers in the U.S., so if that includes you then you shouldn't have to do anything special to get the new feature in Gemini on the web or on mobile. You may well see a pop-up message inside the app announcing that you've got the upgrade, which is what Google often does.

With the Create image option selected, you can simply type out what you want to see, and Gemini takes care of the rest. Something like "create a sketch of my family on vacation at the beach" or "make a photo collage of my desert island essentials" should work, if there's enough information to go on in Google Photos.

Google says Gemini will look at the labels you've applied in Google Photos, such as the names of people and pets, to try and work out what you're asking for. There's clearly quite a bit of educated guesswork going on with the AI here, and "Gemini might not always pick the exact photo or detail you had in mind on the first try," according to Google.

You can always click on the Sources button underneath a generated AI image to see the photos that Gemini has picked as reference points, and ask Gemini to make edits to what's been created using follow-up prompts. You can also click the + (plus) button on the prompt box if you want to point Gemini toward a different reference photo.

There is something a little creepy about prompting Gemini using these intimate details about your life, but it's only really the integration between apps that's new: If you use Google Photos, then it's constantly using AI to recognize what's in your pictures so you can better sort through them and organize them, including family members and pets.

Google says Gemini doesn't "directly" train its AI models on your photos, but instead uses "limited" information from them to improve the user experience. Connecting Google Photos to Gemini remains an opt-in choice, and one you can reverse at any time: Inside the Gemini app, click the cog icon (on the web) or tap your profile picture (on mobile), then choose Connected apps to make changes.


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NIST is overhauling how it manages the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and switching to a risk-based model that prioritizes “enrichment” of only the most critical CVE-numbered security vulnerabilities.

“This change is driven by a surge in CVE submissions, which increased 263% between 2020 and 2025,” the National Institute of Standards and Technology said. “We don’t expect this trend to let up anytime soon.”

OPIS

A two-year struggle and a new approach

NIST has been struggling to update NVD’s CVE entries with relevant information – descriptions, severity (CVSS) scores, known affected software configurations, etc. – for over two years.

The problem was acknowledged in early 2024 and despite occasional optimistic updates, it’s now become clear that the veritable onslaught of CVE-numbered security issues is too much for NVD’s analysts to tackle.

“We are working faster than ever. We enriched nearly 42,000 CVEs in 2025 — 45% more than any prior year. But this increased productivity is not enough to keep up with growing submissions. Therefore, we are instituting a new approach,” NIST announced.

“All submitted CVEs will still be added to the NVD. However, those that do not meet the criteria above will be categorized as ‘Not Scheduled.’ This will allow us to focus on CVEs with the greatest potential for widespread impact.”

OPIS

The new NVD CVE processing workflow (Source: NIST)

From now on, the CVE entries that will be prioritized for enrichment will fall into one of three categories:

  • They’ve already been added to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
  • Affect software used within the (US) federal government
  • Affect critical software (as defined by Executive Order 14028):
    • Identity, credential, and access management (ICAM) systems
    • Operating systems, hypervisors, and container environments
    • Web browsers
    • Endpoint security software
    • Network control software
    • Network protection products
    • Network monitoring and configuration tools
    • Operational monitoring and analysis software
    • Remote scanning software
    • Remote access and configuration management tools
    • Backup/recovery and remote storage software
    • Open source and government-developed software that falls into one of the above categories
    • In specific cases, libraries, packages, and modules that are integrated into and necessary for the operation of the software that falls into one of the above categories

NIST will also stop routinely adding their own separated severity score to the entries and will rely on the one provided by CVE Numbering Authorities, and will not enrich CVEs with an NVD publish date earlier than March 1, 2026.

Users will be able to ask, via email, that NIST’s analysts enrich specific high-impact unscheduled CVEs or provide a separate severity score, but it remains to be seen how quickly these requests will be reviewed and acted upon.

With LLMs increasingly being used for vulnerability discovery and Anthropic and OpenAI sharing Claude Mythos and GPT-5.4-Cyber with vetted security researchers and teams, the flood of CVE submissions will only grow stronger.

By taking some of the pressure off its analysts, NIST hopes to buy itself time to build better automated tools that can handle that volume.

CVE Program’s problems

NIST’s announcement comes amid renewed uncertainty around the CVE Program, which is the foundation on which the NVD is built.

Run by MITRE and largely funded by the US Department of Homeland Security, nearly collapsed last year when its federal funding contract was about to expire, prompting CISA to step in at the last minute and triggering efforts to establish an independent CVE Foundation.

CVE Program board member Katie Noble recently warned that the surge in AI-fueled vulnerability reports is straining the program, and that it needs to evolve to keep up and continue to be relevant.

Nuno Rodrigues Carvalho, Head of Sector for Incident and Vulnerability Services at EU’s cybersecurity agency ENISA, told Help Net Security that a global common good service of this importance should not depend excessively on a potential “single point of failure,” whether financial, institutional, or operational, and that a stronger model would preserve the integrity of the shared CVE backbone while distributing responsibilities across trusted actors that can contribute capacity, services, and operational support.

ENISA, he said, is ready to contribute to the program while continuing to build European vulnerability services capacity in parallel.

The agency is currently in the process of becoming a top-level root CVE Numbering Authority for the CVE Program, which will allow it to influence its operation and evolution.

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Software teams building agentic AI workflows have been pushing frontier models toward longer, unsupervised task runs. Claude Opus 4.7, now generally available from Anthropic, is aimed squarely at that demand, with particular gains in software engineering, multimodal processing, and the kind of instruction fidelity that matters when a model is running tasks autonomously over multiple steps.

Claude Opus 4.7

Opus 4.7 is available across all Claude products and the API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry. Pricing remains the same as Opus 4.6: $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens.

What changed from Opus 4.6

Opus 4.7 is a notable improvement on Opus 4.6 in advanced software engineering, with particular gains on the most difficult tasks. The model handles complex, long-running tasks with rigor and consistency, pays precise attention to instructions, and devises ways to verify its own outputs before reporting back.

On the vision side, the upgrade is significant. Opus 4.7 can accept images up to 2,576 pixels on the long edge, approximately 3.75 megapixels, more than three times as many as prior Claude models.

That increase supports use cases including computer-use agents reading dense screenshots, data extractions from complex diagrams, and work that needs pixel-perfect references

The higher resolution is a model-level change, meaning images sent to the API are automatically processed at greater fidelity; users who do not need the extra detail can downsample images before sending to control token costs.

Instruction-following behavior has also shifted in ways that require attention from teams migrating existing deployments. Where previous models interpreted instructions loosely or skipped parts entirely, Opus 4.7 takes the instructions literally. Users should re-tune their prompts and harnesses accordingly.

Opus 4.7 is also better at using file system-based memory. It remembers important notes across long, multi-session work, and uses them to move on to new tasks that, as a result, need less up-front context.

Cybersecurity controls and the Cyber Verification Program

The release carries specific policy weight tied to Anthropic’s earlier work on AI and cybersecurity risk. Opus 4.7 is the first model on which Anthropic is testing new cyber safeguards on a less capable model before moving toward a broader release of Mythos-class models.

Its cyber capabilities are not as advanced as those of Mythos Preview; during training, Anthropic experimented with efforts to differentially reduce these capabilities.

Opus 4.7 ships with safeguards that automatically detect and block requests indicating prohibited or high-risk cybersecurity uses. What Anthropic learns from real-world deployment of these safeguards will inform its eventual goal of a broad release of Mythos-class models.

Security professionals who wish to use Opus 4.7 for legitimate cybersecurity purposes, such as vulnerability research, penetration testing, and red-teaming, are invited to join Anthropic’s new Cyber Verification Program.

Safety profile

Opus 4.7 shows a similar safety profile to Opus 4.6, with low rates of concerning behavior such as deception, sycophancy, and cooperation with misuse.

On some measures, including honesty and resistance to malicious prompt injection attacks, Opus 4.7 is an improvement on Opus 4.6. In others, such as its tendency to give overly detailed harm-reduction advice on controlled substances, Opus 4.7 is modestly weaker.

Anthropic’s alignment assessment concluded that the model is “largely well-aligned and trustworthy, though not fully ideal in its behavior.” Mythos Preview remains the best-aligned model Anthropic has trained according to its evaluations. anthropic Full safety evaluations are covered in the Claude Opus 4.7 System Card.

Migration considerations

Teams upgrading from Opus 4.6 should expect changes in token consumption. Opus 4.7 uses an updated tokenizer that improves how the model processes text, with the same input mapping to more tokens, roughly 1.0 to 1.35 times depending on content type. Opus 4.7 also thinks more at higher effort levels, particularly on later turns in agentic settings, which improves reliability on hard problems but produces more output tokens.

Anthropic says the net effect has been favorable in internal testing on a coding evaluation, with token usage improved across all effort levels. A migration guide is available at the Claude Platform documentation site.


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When you buy a Samsung Galaxy phone, you're not just getting the standard, stock Android experience as far as software goes: You're also getting One UI, Samsung's own take on Android, complete with its own visual look, AI features, and other tweaks. One UI means you get access to settings on a Galaxy handset that aren't available on other Android phones—you can apply customizations and controls you won't find on a handset from Nothing or Google. Whether you're thinking of buying a Galaxy phone and want to know what the benefits are, or you already own a Samsung handset and want to make sure you're exploring everything it has to offer, here are some of my favorite settings exclusive to One UI.

Adjust your Galaxy's color balance

Several other Android phones offer some basic tweaks for the color balance of the display, but Samsung goes above and beyond to give you more control. If you tap Display > Screen mode from Settings, you can adjust white balance with a slider, and switch between Vivid and Natural modes.

Tap Advanced settings, and you can apply changes that are even more granular. You get separate sliders for the red, green, and blue color channels, and another slider to adjust the vividness of the screen. Keep your eyes on the preview pictures at the top to see the effects of your changes.

Customize your Galaxy's side button

One UI Settings
Side button customization. Credit: Lifehacker

The main side or power button on Galaxy phones can be remapped if you don't want to stick with the default configuration, which is a double press to launch the camera and a long press to launch Google Gemini. (Note you can't customize a single press, which will either lock or unlock your handset.)

From Settings, choose Advanced features > Side button, then pick either Double press or Long press. You have a lot of options for a double press: everything from the flashlight and magnifier, to the Samsung Voice Recorder or any other app of your choice. For a long press, you can switch to a different digital assistant, or have a long press turn off the phone instead. By default, you need to press and hold both the side button and the volume down button to power off a Samsung Galaxy handset, so switching to a long press can be more convenient.

Set up the Edge panel on your Galaxy

The Edge panel that's available on Samsung phones is a real superpower for One UI. It's a pop-up shortcut box that gives you quick access to apps, contacts, and features on your phone, and it can work as well as the Windows taskbar or the macOS dock.

You can set up and customize the Edge panel from Settings by heading to Display > Edge panels. The options here let you change the appearance and position of the panel, and switch between the type of panel you want: Choose from Apps, People, Tasks, Weather, Tools, Clipboard, or Reminder. To customize the actual shortcuts on the Edge panel, open it with a swipe from the side of the screen, then tap the pen icon at the bottom. You can make sure your most-used apps and shortcuts are always readily available.

Boost your Galaxy's available RAM

One UI Settings
RAM Plus settings. Credit: Lifehacker

Samsung Galaxy phones come with a feature called RAM Plus that borrows part of your handset's storage and uses it as temporary RAM—which should mean launching and switching between apps happens more quickly. You can find the feature and change how much storage it uses by selecting Device care > Memory > RAM Plus from Settings.

Use multi window mode on your Galaxy

One UI has a multi-window mode that turns Android into a more desktop-like operating system, and it can be helpful on phones with larger screens when you need to get a couple of apps up side by side. You can configure the feature by opening Settings and picking Advanced features > Multi window.

To actually get apps up alongside each other, swipe up from the bottom of the screen into the center of the display to see your recently opened apps. Tap any of the app icons at the top of the carousel, then choose Open in split screen view. You then get to pick a second app to share the display with the first one.

Automatically restart your Galaxy

One UI Settings
Auto restart options. Credit: Lifehacker

If you open Settings and select Device care > Auto optimization, you'll see an option labeled Auto restart. If you enable this, your phone will restart when it's not being used to "keep it running in the best condition" (Samsung's words). You can opt to Restart when needed or Restart on a schedule. These regular restarts can help in clearing out the memory and temporary file cache on your phone, which can in turn optimize performance. As the information on screen tells you, restarts will only happen when the screen is off, you're not actively using your phone, the battery level is about 30 percent, and the SIM card lock feature is off.

Apply 'Intelligent Wi-Fi' to your Galaxy

One UI on Galaxy phones doesn't just offer wifi—it offers "Intelligent Wi-Fi," which means it uses AI to optimize your connection as much as possible. Tasks where latency is crucial (such as video calls) get prioritized, and if the phone thinks you'll get better performance on a cellular connection, it will automatically switch to this instead.

To find the options, open Settings and select Connections > Wi-Fi. Then you need to tap the three dots up in the top right corner, choose Intelligent Wi-Fi from the menu, and you're then able to switch on the features you want to make use of. There's also a secret wifi monitoring tool hidden away here.


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Ever since our house flooded in the middle of the night (though thankfully before we fell asleep), my wife and I have been diligent about setting up water alarms all over the house, so we'll receive crucial warning the moment something leaks or backs up.

Well, the other night, the alarm under the kitchen sink went off while the dishwasher was running—and, sure enough, there was water gushing out of the sink drain. Luckily, I was able to turn off the water and clean everything up before it totally ruined my cabinets and floors. I started my investigation into the problem, and about three seconds later, it was obvious: My sink drain had a huge gap in it:

The ginormous hole in my corroded kitchen drain pipe.
The ginormous hole in my corroded kitchen drain pipe. Credit: Jeff Somers

It was actually kind of amazing—a chunk of pipe was just gone, and what was left was as fragile as tissue paper. I called a few plumbers, but no one could get to me for a few days (plumbers have a very narrow definition of the word “emergency”). I was faced with the prospect of not being able to use my kitchen sink or dishwasher for a while, or risk further damage to my house.

But I had another option: A quick fix with an epoxy putty.

Epoxy putty is an easy, water-resistant solution to leaks

Epoxy putties all work generally the same: They contain a resin and a hardening agent, and when these clay-like materials are combined, a chemical reaction quickly hardens them into whatever shape you work them into. There are a few major brands to choose from, including J-B WaterWeld, PC-Plumbing Epoxy Putty, Oatey Stick Fix-It, and Loctite Epoxy Putty. I happened to have some WaterWeld on hand, so that’s what I used to save my kitchen, but any of these products will probably work as well.

How to quickly patch a leak with epoxy putty

The process is pretty straightforward: First, you pinch off as much putty as you think you’ll need (wear gloves—this stuff can irritate your skin):

The two parts of an epoxy putty ready to be combined.
The two parts of an epoxy putty ready to be combined. Credit: Jeff Somers

Knead the meaterial together, mixing the resin and the hardener until it’s all one color:

Kneading the putty together is oddly satisfying.
Kneading the putty together is oddly satisfying. Credit: Jeff Somers

Now apply the putty to your leak. In my case, I used pretty much the whole package to encapsulate the massive hole in my kitchen drain:

My masterful putty repair kept the kitchen in business until the plumber arrived.
My masterful putty repair kept the kitchen in business until the plumber arrived. Credit: Jeff Somers

Different products will have different working times and hardening times. WaterWeld takes about 25 minutes to set, so you need to work relatively quickly. Luckily, temporary plumbing repairs don’t need to be pretty. I just rolled it onto the drain, pressed it into place, and worked the edges to create a seal. It's important to note that epoxy putty products like this are intended for low-pressure repairs; while they can probably plug pinhole leaks in high-pressure pipes, a repair of this size wouldn't have worked if under any sort of intense water pressure.

WaterWeld cures in about an hour, so after waiting it out, I went ran the water in the sink for a while to test it—and not a drop came out. Then I ran the dishwasher with my water alarm in place, and experienced zero problems. The putty repair held for the three days it took a plumber to show up (to add insult to injury, he wasn’t even impressed with my brilliant temporary fix). In the meantime, we were able to use the kitchen normally without risking further water damage. For a product that costs about $7, that’s not bad.


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