Nintendo just wrapped up its April 2025 Mario Kart World Direct, revealing details about new items, modes, and more about those strange snacks players can chomp into when the Nintendo Switch 2 launches this June.Nintendo’s latest entry into its long-running kart racing spinoff series looks like the next big step for Mario and co. That’s thanks in part to a smorgasbord of both new and returning items, while other familiar features have either been given small tweaks or total facelifts. Mario Kart World dived into a solid slice of everything players can expect in its 15-minute presentation, so we made sure to gather the highlights.Mario Kart World ScreenshotsItemsThe biggest question block hanging over everyone’s heads has had players questioning which wacky items they’ll be able to toss at their friends come June. Nintendo’s got a fittingly wacky answer that includes spins on items and abilities that may be able to be paired with some of Mario Kart World’s new features.Items like the Bullet Bill and Lightning appear to function just as you remember. The former sends players flying forward at breakneck speeds, while the latter stops and shrinks opponents, though now it also causes it to start raining in the game now that Mario Kart has introduced weather effects. Meanwhile, classic items like the Feather also remain largely unchanged, but now, players can use them to not only hop over some of the many new track hazards but also reach new areas, high-up rails, and even shortcuts.New items have plenty to bring to the table, too. The Coin Shell is a golden shell variant that leaves a trail of coins for you – and your enemies – as it moves forward through the track ahead of its thrower. Kamek is an especially wild addition, as the Koopa wizard can be spawned to transform each of your opponents into something completely new. Other highlights include Hammers that now stick in the ground for a short time and a slightly tweaked Ice Flower that can seen multiple opponents spinning at a time.One of Mario Kart World’s more mysterious items are those new food-related abilities. These are called Dash Foods and come in the form of tasty burgers, plates of sushi, kebabs, and more. These are collectibles that can be acquired around Mario Kart World’s giant map and, once gobbled up, unlock new outfits to use elsewhere. In case you were wondering, yes, the Moo Moo Meadows Cow can, in fact, eat burgers.New TricksTricks have been an important part of Mario Kart since 2008’s Mario Kart Wii, and in Mario Kart World, they’ve been given added importance. You can charge jump straight from the track this time around, allowing you to not only short hop over items but fully clear hazards like other vehicles, too. It should help reach those out-of-reach rails to grind on as well, with additional tricks in the air giving players the ability to gain a bit of extra air.Tricks will also help players leap toward and latch onto walls, which can be hopped between to find new portions of a track and even some hidden item blocks. Chaining tricks together can be tricky, so if you find yourself missing a particular jump to a high-up ledge, a new Rewind feature will help you turn back the clock for a few moments to hone your skills.PlayModesWhile modes like Grand Prix and Time Trials are back, Mario Kart World comes with loads of new modes, too. Knockout Tour is one of the more substantial additions, as it allows players to compete to stay ahead of the pack across extended races. Those who fall behind are in danger of being, well, knocked out.Time Trials are one returning mode that have been beefed up to accommodate Mario Kart World’s improved multiplayer functionality. When hopping online, players will have the option to download data from other racers from around the world. Longtime Mario Kart fans will also be happy to know that fan-favorite modes like VS Race, Balloon Battle, and Coin Runners are back and feature some of those new tracks to fight off friends with. There’s also a full-on photo mode, which can be used to capture iconic moments when cruising around the world.Of course, Mario Kart World’s biggest new mode is its open-world-inspired free roam feature, which allows players to explore its vast map and all of the tracks it houses. We explained everything you need to know about this major addition to the Mario Kart universe and how you can play it with your friends here.PlayMario Kart World launches alongside the Switch 2 June 5. We’re still waiting for Nintendo to set a new date for pre-order options in the US and Canada following their delay earlier this month. Meanwhile, the topic of the console’s price remains one detail that continues to take over Nintendo comment sections. Today’s Mario Kart World Direct was no exception, as players made sure its chat sections were filled with comments like “drop the price.”For more on Mario Kart World, you can read up on all of the new characters and tracks arriving this June. You can also see how players have been reacting to the title’s controversial $80 price tag and how Nintendo attempted to address it. Finally, for everything else announced during today’s Direct, you can click here.Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

He is coming. Synopses and first looks had long hinted that The Fantastic Four: First Steps would introduce an incredibly powerful character to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, someone whose mere existence would have reverberations across realities. The latest trailer for First Steps doesn’t completely reveal this character, but we do see a harbinger announce his arrival and its effects on team leader Reed Richards a.k.a Mister Fantastic. What? No, the name isn’t Galan, better known as Galactus. Yes, the world-devourer does appear in the form of a shadow and a foot (not a cloud!), but the most powerful character teased in the trailer is Franklin, the oldest son of Reed and Sue Richards, a boy who can change reality with his imagination. The Arrival of Franklin Right from their first appearance in 1961, the Fantastic Four were a family first, scientists and superheroes second. So it was just a matter of time before creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had central couple Reed Richards and Sue Storm get married and welcome their first child Franklin Benjamin Richards, born in 1968’s Fantastic Four Annual #6. A mind-bending, psychedelic journey into the Negative Zone, Fantastic Four Annual #6 follows Reed and teammates Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm as they seek the one thing that can save Sue, whose delivery is threatened by her exposure to cosmic rays. Lee and Kirby’s larger-than-life approach to family details mark Franklin’s odd life, as seen by Reed and Sue’s decision to hire the witch Agatha Harkness (originally a sage elderly woman in the comics, not snarky Kathryn Hahn) as a nanny. But Franklin’s life gets even weirder when he begins manifesting powers, even as a toddler. Initially, it seemed as if Franklin had psychic abilities that allowed him to disrupt the minds of others or even see the future, which led to him taking the name “Tattletale” and joining a team of kid superheroes called the Power Pack. However, upon closer inspection, Reed discovered that Franklin wasn’t seeing the future — he was creating it. Franklin had the ability to make and remake reality, powers so great that the occurred on a subconscious level. Moreover, Reed and Sue learned that Franklin’s powers came from what is known in the Marvel Universe as the X-Gene, making him officially a mutant in the manner of the X-Men. And so, Franklin Richards quickly changed from the baby child of two superheroes to someone with connections to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men and who could remake the world according to his desires. This, obviously, let to some outrageous stories. Fantastic Franklin Late in the 2012 story “Forever,” the Fantastic Four stand at the edge of oblivion. Despite their remarkable powers, neither the Four nor their super-powered friends in the Avengers or the X-Men could stand up to the Mad Celestials, literal gods who have lost their minds and plan to undo reality. Amidst the chaos, Reed and Sue hear a familiar, if changed, voice shout, “Rise!” The voice belongs to the adult Franklin, who has come from the future to help his family face the Mad Celestials. “Rise! Rise!” Franklin repeats, until a gigantic figure arrives in the skyline, ready to face the Celestials. Upon seeing him, Franklin commands, “To me, my Galactus!” This scene from Fantastic Four #604, written by Jonathan Hickman and penciled by Steve Epting, stands as perhaps the best moment involving Franklin showing off his powers, but it is far from the only instance. Franklin regularly recreates reality, sometimes in small ways, by helping his godfather the Thing win a match against Yancey Street rivals, and sometimes on a galactic scale. Adult Franklin often shows up in time travel stories, including the beloved X-Men two-parter Days of Future Past (and more so in the less-effective sequel Days of Future Present) or as a new Galactus in the Earth X series by Alex Ross. Writers have also used Franklin as a tool to reboot continuity, most famously in the Heroes Reborn/Heroes Return debacle that followed Marvel’s company-wide Onslaught story. After the Fantastic Four and Avengers were killed by a new villain called Onslaught, Franklin remakes them in a new reality, one that just so happened to be written and drawn by flashy ’90s artists like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (yes, that’s where this image of Captain America comes from). When fans rejected the edgy reboots, Marvel published a story where Franklin reintegrates the FF and the Avengers into mainline reality and promptly lost his powers. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Of course, Franklin got his powers back again only to lose them later, something that would be annoying if the stories weren’t so good. Case in point, 2024’s Fantastic Four #14, written by Ryan North and penciled by Carlos Gómez, in which a formerly depowered Franklin wakes up with his abilities intact and explains that he’s stripped them away himself. His powers return once a year, in which he explores realities to end threats that his family and other Marvel heroes cannot stop, and then goes back to being a normal human kid. Just a Boy The decision to return himself to being a normal kid is central to Franklin’s appeal, and that of the entire Fantastic Four. No matter how amazing the adventures, the Fantastic Four must be a family first, regular people who love one another. Given the alternate 1960s where First Steps takes place, it’s hard not to believe that Franklin’s reality-warping powers might have something to do with integrating the team into the MCU’s Earth-616 — after all, the aforementioned Fantastic Four #604 comes in the lead-up to Secret Wars, the story that will become 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars. However, the trailer’s focus on Johnny and Ben celebrating their uncle status and Reed and Sue fretting about being parents shows that First Steps is putting the family first, the most important part of any Franklin Richards story. The Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in theaters on July 24, 2025.

The Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs have ruffled feathers across the world — and reignited Europe’s push for digital sovereignty.  One of the key focus points has been Europe’s cloud infrastructure, which is currently dominated by US tech giants: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Together, the “big three” account for more than 50% of the continent’s cloud market. “Europe has been heavily reliant on US tech and cloud for decades,” said Mark Boost, CEO of UK-based web hosting company Civo. “But there are alternatives, where France, Germany, and the UK have full control of their data and cloud landscape.” Trump’s tariffs, Boost added, had “cemented the idea that Europe can no longer afford to rely on the US for its digital infrastructure.” Thankfully, Europe has loads of homegrown cloud providers. The largest is France’s OVHcloud, which runs the world’s largest data centre by surface area. Others include Finland’s UpCloud, Switzerland’s Exoscale, Germany’s IONOS, and France’s Scaleway (the cloud provider of choice for French AI unicorn Mistral). View the full agenda These alternative cloud providers may not match the scale and breadth of services offered by the US hyperscalers. They do, however, offer something very attractive in these uncertain geopolitical times: data sovereignty and privacy.    As Alexander Samsig, senior consultant and partner at Norwegian tech consultancy Funktive, put it in a recent blog post: “In 2025, the choice of a cloud provider isn’t just about technology or price.” Boost echoes that sentiment. “A sovereign European cloud could foster an ecosystem defined by fairness and transparency, in which domestic providers can compete, and customers have maximum freedom to choose the service that’s right for them,” he said.   It’s not a pipedream, either — Europe has cut its dependence on powerful American tech before and can do it again.  Europeans once relied entirely on the US for GPS access, but today, smartphone users on the continent can access navigation through the EU’s Galileo satellite system. Launched in 2016, Galileo is one of the world’s best satellite networks, and unlike others, it’s a civilian system designed with secure service provision at its core. It cost around €10bn to build and deploy. If Europe is truly committed to building sovereign cloud infrastructure, it will need to back up its ambitions with significant investment. “Allocating funding for domestic sovereign clouds would also go a long way to supporting domestic industries, and would send a clear signal that Europe can chart an independent path from the US and China,” said Boost.  Political momentum on this front looks to be building. In a speech yesterday, France’s AI minister, Clara Chappaz, called on the continent to “work as a pack” to take on US “predator” tech firms, particularly in the cloud services sector.  To shield Europe from US tech dominance, Chappaz urged the bloc to enforce its digital rulebook, stand up to Trump’s “idiotic” trade war, and hit back with digital taxes on Big Tech — if required. She also slammed “sovereignty washing” — when US cloud giants partner with EU firms to appear sovereign — and backed strict standards like France’s SecNumCloud certification, which disqualifies foreign-owned providers based on shareholding caps. Chappaz said Europe is finally “waking up” to the need for true cloud independence. The minister also claimed that both OVHcloud and Scaleway saw record client growth since Trump took office.  Europe’s digital sovereignty will be a hot topic at TNW Conference, which takes place on June 19-20 in Amsterdam. Tickets for the event are now on sale. Use the code TNWXMEDIA2025 at the check-out to get 30% off the price tag. Story by Siôn Geschwindt Siôn is a freelance science and technology reporter, specialising in climate and energy. From nuclear fusion breakthroughs to electric vehic (show all) Siôn is a freelance science and technology reporter, specialising in climate and energy. From nuclear fusion breakthroughs to electric vehicles, he's happiest sourcing a scoop, investigating the impact of emerging technologies, and even putting them to the test. He has five years of journalism experience and holds a dual degree in media and environmental science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. When he's not writing, you can probably find Siôn out hiking, surfing, playing the drums or catering to his moderate caffeine addiction. You can contact him at: sion.geschwindt [at] protonmail [dot] com Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week. Also tagged with

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Sponsored by CardPointers: The best way to maximize your credit card rewards. 9to5Mac Daily listeners can exclusively save 30% and get a $100 Savings Card. New episodes of 9to5Mac Daily are recorded every weekday. Subscribe to our podcast in Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast player to guarantee new episodes are delivered as soon as they’re available. Stories discussed in this episode: Listen & Subscribe: Subscribe to support Chance directly with 9to5Mac Daily Plus and unlock: Ad-free versions of every episode Bonus content Catch up on 9to5Mac Daily episodes! Don’t miss out on our other daily podcasts: Share your thoughts! Drop us a line at happyhour@9to5mac.com. You can also rate us in Apple Podcasts or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show. Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Back in October of 2024, Tesla investors and fanboys alike flocked to Hollywood for the company's "We, Robot" event.The company's backers hoped Musk would finally unveil the long-awaited "$25,000 Tesla" — a lower-budget EV that was sure to rejuvenate sales as the costly Cybertruck flopped — but what they got was anything but.Instead, the event kicked off with a visibly stiff Elon Musk waving to the crowd and climbing into a garish gold sedan. It was our first peak at Cybercab, Tesla's self-driving taxi platform. The event also rolled out a bizarro pill-shaped prototype called Robovan and gave a live demonstration of Optimus, a supposedly AI-powered humanoid robot.Each product came with limited details and vague delivery timelines from Musk. Tesla's stocks immediately slipped the next morning while serious investors derided the event as a bunch of "cheap parlor tricks."Optimus subsequently sputtered, and we haven't heard a peep about the Robovan. It's the Cybercab — which is slated to be so committed to the self-driving vision that it won't have a steering wheel or pedals — that Musk is betting the future of the company on, and it's poised to take its first big test in a citywide rollout across Austin, Texas this summer.But for it to be successful, the Cybercab will have to survive the sprawling Texas roads and outcompete established rideshare competitors like Uber and Lyft,already rolled out in Austin. And that's without getting into Donald Trump's tariffs, which are already wreaking havoc on the Cybercab's production plans.Tesla's robotaxi will also have to contend with Musk's ever-irrational ego trips. In new reporting, The Information found that when an internal Tesla analysis suggested that the Cybercab would was unlikely to sell well or become profitable, Musk buried the report instead of facing reality."We had lots of modeling that showed the payback around [Full Self Driving] and Robotaxi was going to be slow," Rohan Patel, Tesla's former head of business development and policy who left the company last year, told the outlet. "It was going to be choppy. It was going to be very, very hard outside of the US, given the regulatory environment or lack of regulatory environment."Per The Information, the internal analysis was based on Musk's own hare-brained assumptions that "individuals would buy the cars, but a large portion of the sales would go to fleet operators, and the vehicles would mostly be used for ride-sharing." In addition, "many people would give up car ownership and use Robotaxis" and "Tesla would get a cut of each Robotaxi ride."Along with some other executives, Patel used this analysis to highlight how much more reasonable it was to focus on the $25,000 vehicle, but Musk shrugged it off. Instead, he axed the $25,000 Tesla program altogether, and went all-in on the Cybercab."Ultimately, I think Elon is just uninterested in making a [Volkswagen] Golf-type car," a source close to the situation told The Information. "It just doesn’t wake him up in the morning. He was, 'Let somebody else do it.'"To make matters worse, Musk then turned down Uber's offer to partner with Tesla and provide Cybercab's client-side software, opting to go it alone instead. Musk's robotaxi will now have to compete with Uber for a piece of the rideshare pie in a city that's already dominated by privately-owned vehicles.Now, with Musk's self-imposed summer deadline looming closer by the day, the company is hemorrhaging high-level talent — and bleeding stock value like a stuck pig.If there was ever a time for Musk to roll up his sleeves and focus on Tesla, this would be it. Too bad he's probably gaming in his government office.More on Tesla: Tesla Accused of Hacking Odometers to Rip Off CustomersShare This Article

Apr 17, 2025Ravie LakshmananMalware / Network Security The China-linked threat actor known as Mustang Panda has been attributed to a cyber attack targeting an unspecified organization in Myanmar with previously unreported tooling, highlighting continued effort by the threat actors to increase the sophistication and effectiveness of their malware. This includes updated versions of a known backdoor called TONESHELL, as well as a new lateral movement tool dubbed StarProxy, two keyloggers codenamed PAKLOG, CorKLOG, and an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) evasion driver referred to as SplatCloak. "TONESHELL, a backdoor used by Mustang Panda, has been updated with changes to its FakeTLS command-and-control (C2) communication protocol as well as to the methods for creating and storing client identifiers," Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Sudeep Singh said in a two-part analysis. Mustang Panda, also known as BASIN, Bronze President, Camaro Dragon, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, and RedDelta, is a China-aligned state-sponsored threat actor active since at least 2012. Known for its attacks on governments, military entities, minority groups, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) primarily in countries located in East Asia, and to a lesser extent in Europe, the group has a history of leveraging DLL side-loading techniques to deliver the PlugX malware. However, since late 2022, campaigns orchestrated by Mustang Panda have begun to frequently deliver a bespoke malware family called TONESHELL, which is designed to download next-stage payloads. Zscaler said it discovered three new variants of the malware that come with varying levels of sophistication - Variant 1, which acts as a simple reverse shell Variant 2, which includes functionality to download DLLs from the C2 and execute them by injecting the DLL into legitimate processes (e.g., svchost.exe) Variant 3, which includes functionality to download files and create a sub-process to execute commands received from a remote server via a custom TCP-based protocol A new piece of software associated with Mustang Panda is StarProxy, which is launched via DLL side-loading and is designed to take advantage of FakeTLS protocol to proxy traffic and facilitate attacker communications."Once active, StarProxy allows attackers to proxy traffic between infected devices and their C2 servers. StarProxy achieves this by utilizing TCP sockets to communicate with the C2 server via the FakeTLS protocol, encrypting all exchanged data with a custom XOR-based encryption algorithm," Singh said. "Additionally, the tool uses command-line arguments to specify the IP address and port for communication, enabling attackers to relay data through compromised machines." StarProxy activity It's believed that StarProxy is deployed as a post-compromise tool to access internal workstations within a network that are not directly exposed to the internet. Also identified are two new keyloggers, PAKLOG and CorKLOG, that are used to monitor keystrokes and clipboard data. The primary difference between the two is that the latter stores the captured data in an encrypted file using a 48-character RC4 key and implements persistence mechanisms by creating services or scheduled tasks. Both the keyloggers lack data exfiltration capabilities of their own, meaning they solely exist to collect the keystroke data and write them to a specific location and that the threat actor uses other methods to transmit them to their infrastructure. Capping off the new additions to the Mustang Panda's malware arsenal is SplatCloak, a Windows kernel driver deployed by SplatDropper that's equipped to disable EDR-related routines implemented by Windows Defender and Kaspersky, thereby allowing it to fly under the radar. "Mustang Panda demonstrates a calculated approach to achieving their objectives," Singh said. "Continuous updates, new tooling, and layered obfuscation prolongs the group's operational security and improves the efficacy of attacks." UNC5221 Drops New Versions of BRICKSTORM Targeting Windows The disclosure comes as the China-nexus cyber espionage cluster named UNC5221 has been connected to use of a new version of the BRICKSTORM malware in attacks aimed at Windows environments in Europe since at least 2022, according to Belgian cybersecurity firm NVISO. BRICKSTORM, first documented last year in connection with the zero-day exploitation of Ivanti Connect Secure zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887) against the MITRE Corporation, is a Golang backdoor deployed on Linux servers running VMware vCenter. "It supports the ability to set itself up as a web server, perform file system and directory manipulation, perform file operations such as upload/download, run shell commands, and perform SOCKS relaying," Google Mandiant said in April 2024. "BRICKSTORM communicates over WebSockets to a hard-coded C2." The newly identified Windows artifacts, also written in Go, provide attackers with file manager and network tunneling capabilities through a panel, enabling them to browse the file system, create or delete files, and tunnel network connections for lateral movement. They also resolve C2 servers through DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), and are engineered to evade network-level defenses like DNS monitoring, TLS inspection, and geo-blocking. "The Windows samples [..] are not equipped with command execution capabilities," NVISO said. "Instead, adversaries have been observed using network tunneling capabilities in combination with valid credentials to abuse well-known protocols such as RDP or SMB, thus achieving similar command execution." Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE    

The lack of nationwide security and privacy ordinance means that data governance is placed in the hands of states to develop their own regulations and requirements, yet less than half of all states have passed data privacy regulations as of February 2025. States such as California, Colorado, Indiana, and Maryland have comprehensive privacy laws whereas states such as Nevada, Vermont, and Washington have narrow privacy laws in effect. Some states enact strict policies and penalties in the face of a cyber-attack or breach. Other states offer the ability to correct security flaws without facing punishments or consequences. Recently, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) issued a report outlining how state security laws fail to protect privacy and ways to improve.  With the onset of emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing, it’s never been more critical to ensure that data is protected. This means that in the near future, businesses need to reevaluate their policies and procedures to meet evolving standards. Security teams who do not have the proper resources or knowledge are left vulnerable to attacks like ransomware.  During this turbulent time, it is important for business and security team leaders to equip themselves with a robust cyber resilience plan and strategy. The main concern is the ability for threat actors to take advantage of evolving legislation causing weaknesses in networks and systems.  Related:Threat Actors will Take AdvantageBad actors are aware of how vulnerable businesses currently are with changing policies and regulations and may try to capitalize on the current landscape. Threat actors will take advantage of the fact that security teams are not getting the most up-to-date threat information and analytics from national researchers. Recent cuts to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center for example, means that organizations no longer have access to intelligence briefings on emerging cybersecurity threats, notices on the latest security patches, incident response support and penetration testing.  IT teams cannot equally fight blind spots in their networks such as misconfigurations and exposures while also staying ahead of advanced sophisticated attack strategies. The only way to combat this is to ensure a proactive offensive cybersecurity strategy that is prepared ahead of inevitable attacks. Adopting an Offensive Cybersecurity Strategy The key to mitigating fines, reputational damage, and operational loss lies in being on the offense and having a well-documented remediation strategy. This approach includes strong security controls, regular software and system updates, network monitoring and visibility, frequent employee training, incident response planning and ensuring immutable backup and segmentation of storage for your data.  Related:Strong access controls mean granting only the necessary access to employees so that they may perform their specific job function without viewing other data or information. This can be done using multifactor authentication, requiring multiple forms of verification. On top of this, conducting regular system and software updates that can patch vulnerabilities and scan for any rectifiable weaknesses in the system is a must. However, once these updates are made it is also important to have a granular view of the network and ecosystem. A robust employee training program should also be incorporated. Employees who have strong cyber maturity are less likely to leave a backdoor open for bad actors to break through.  No offensive security approach is complete without incidence response planning. If roles and responsibilities are outlined prior to an attack, then operational downtime may be minimized if a plan is put in motion at the first sign of malicious behavior.  Related:Deploying Immutable StorageIt is important to highlight that one of the best ways to ensure your data is protected and secured is to employ immutable storage. This is because it stores a backup copy of unalterable and undeletable data, offering strong protection against data tampering or loss. Applying facets of zero trust to your immutable storage (as mentioned in ZTDR best practices) completely segments the backup software from the backup storage and adheres to the 3-2-1 backup rule as well as the extended 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule. Employing a 3-2-1-1-0 backup strategy effectively leverages the strengths of both immutable and traditional backups, optimizing security and resource allocation. Immutable backups can be established through various infrastructures and stored across diverse platforms, including on-premise and cloud environments. Unlike conventional backups that may be susceptible to changes, immutable backups create unchangeable copies of your valuable data, offering an ironclad defense against accidental or malicious modifications. Another benefit of immutable backup is its ability to help companies maintain data integrity and comply with legal and regulatory data retention requirements, ensuring that original data copies are preserved accurately. Overall, with less federal oversight of security and privacy regulations, these requirements are now in states' hands. Some states offer a window to rectify security flaws without further penalty, while others enact stiff penalties for a customer breach along with requiring direct engagement from a state regulator. Therefore, business leaders need to keep their data safe to mitigate monetary loss and reputational damage by adopting an offensive cybersecurity strategy and deploying truly immutable storage to ensure compliance and resiliency.  

There’s that old expression: Actions speak louder than words. It’s hard to imagine a truism more true of cinema than that one. In this “show, don’t tell” artistic medium, a dozen great dialogue scenes are rarely as effective or as memorable as one unique action sequence.So today we are honoring that saying here at ScreenCrush by naming the ten best action movies of the last ten years. As you read through it you will notice the absence of two other film genres that often overlap with action: Sports (where something like Creed might qualify as an action movie, given the amount of onscreen fighting) and animation (where you could argue for something like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, thanks to several extremely dynamic set pieces).Both were deliberately left out; the former because sports movies feel like their own separate category worth judging on their own, and the latter because it doesn’t seem fare to compare the athletic feats of actual human beings, which are governed by things like physics, and cartoon characters, who bear no such restrictions on their activities.Once you filter out those possibilities, here is what is left. Hopefully these words speak loudly in honor of these amazing action movies.The 10 Best Action Movies of the Last 10 Years (2015-2024)Shootouts, fist fights, car chases, spectacular leaps ... these are the best action movies of the last ten years.Honorable Mentions: Atomic Blonde, Black Panther, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Gemini Man, The Killer (2024), Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, The Nice Guys, Shadow, Sicario, Triple Frontier.READ MORE: The 10 Best Comedies of the Last 10 YearsGet our free mobile appEvery ‘Star Trek’ Movie Ranked From Worst to BestEvery Star Trek movie, from The Motion Picture to Beyond, ranked. Did we get them right?

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As a child of an electronic engineer, I spent a lot of time in our local Radio Shack as a kid. While my dad was locating capacitors and resistors, I was in the toy section. It was there, in 1984, that I discovered the best toy of my childhood: the Armatron robotic arm.  A drawing from the patent application for the Armatron robotic arm.COURTESY OF TAKARA TOMY Described as a “robot-like arm to aid young masterminds in scientific and laboratory experiments,” it was the rare toy that lived up to the hype printed on the front of the box. This was a legit robotic arm. You could rotate the arm to spin around its base, tilt it up and down, bend it at the “elbow” joint, rotate the “wrist,” and open and close the bright-­orange articulated hand in elegant chords of movement, all using only the twistable twin joysticks.  Anyone who played with this toy will also remember the sound it made. Once you slid the power button to the On position, you heard a constant whirring sound of plastic gears turning and twisting. And if you tried to push it past its boundaries, it twitched and protested with a jarring “CLICK … CLICK … CLICK.” It wasn’t just kids who found the Armatron so special. It was featured on the cover of the November/December 1982 issue of Robotics Age magazine, which noted that the $31.95 toy (about $96 today) had “capabilities usually found only in much more expensive experimental arms.” JIM GOLDEN A few years ago I found my Armatron, and when I opened the case to get it working again, I was startled to find that other than the compartment for the pair of D-cell batteries, a switch, and a tiny three-volt DC motor, this thing was totally devoid of any electronic components. It was purely mechanical. Later, I found the patent drawings for the Armatron online and saw how incredibly complex the schematics of the gearbox were. This design was the work of a genius—or a madman. The man behind the arm I needed to know the story of this toy. I reached out to the manufacturer, Tomy (now known as Takara Tomy), which has been in business in Japan for over 100 years. It put me in touch with Hiroyuki Watanabe, a 69-year-old engineer and toy designer living in Tokyo. He’s retired now, but he worked at Tomy for 49 years, building many classic handheld electronic toys of the ’80s, including Blip, Digital Diamond, Digital Derby, and Missile Strike. Watanabe’s name can be found on 44 patents, and he was involved in bringing between 50 and 60 products to market. Watanabe answered emailed questions via video, and his responses were translated from Japanese. “I didn’t have a period where I studied engineering professionally. Instead, I enrolled in what Japan would call a technical high school that trains technical engineers, and I actually [entered] the electrical department there,” he told me.  Afterward, he worked at Komatsu Manufacturing—because, he said, he liked bulldozers. But in 1974, he saw that Tomy was hiring, and he wanted to make toys. “I was told that it was the No. 1 toy company in Japan, so I decided [it was worth a look],” he said. “I took a night train from Tohoku to Tokyo to take a job exam, and that’s how I ended up joining the company.” The inspiration for the Armatron came from a newspaper clipping that Watanabe’s boss brought to him one day. “It showed an image of a [mechanical arm] holding an egg with three fingers. I think we started out thinking, ‘This is where things are heading these days, so let’s make this,’” he recalled.  As the lead of a small team, Watanabe briefly turned his attention to another project, and by the time he returned to the robotic arm, the team had a prototype. But it was quite different from the Armatron’s final form. “The hand stuck out from the main body to the side and could only move about 90 degrees. The control panel also had six movement positions, and they were switched using six switches. I personally didn’t like that,” said Watanabe. So he went back to work. The Armatron’s inventor, Hiroyuki Watanabe, in Tokyo in 2025COURTESY OF TAKARA TOMY Watanabe’s breakthrough was inspired by the radio-controlled helicopters he operated as a hobby. Holding up a radio remote controller with dual joystick controls, he told me, “This stick operation allows you to perform four movements with two arms, but I thought that if you twist this part, you can use six movements.” Watanabe at work at Tomy in Tokyo in 1982.COURTESY OF HIROYUKI WATANABE “I had always wanted to create a system that could rotate 360 degrees, so I thought about how to make that system work,” he added. Watanabe stressed that while he is listed as the Armatron’s primary inventor, it was a team effort. A designer created the case, colors, and logo, adding touches to mimic features seen on industrial robots of the time, such as the rubber tubes (which are just for looks).  When the Armatron first came out, in 1981, robotics engineers started contacting Watanabe. “I wasn’t so much hearing from people at toy stores, but rather from researchers at university laboratories, factories, and companies that were making industrial robots,” he said. “They were quite encouraging, and we often talked together.” The long reach of the robot at Radio Shack The bold look and function of Armatron made quite an impression on many young kids who would one day have a career in robotics. One of them was Adam Burrell, a mechanical design engineer who has been building robots for 15 years at Boston Dynamics, including Petman, the YouTube-famous Atlas, and the dog-size quadruped called Spot.  Burrell grew up a few blocks away from a Radio Shack in New York City. “If I was going to the subway station, we would walk right by Radio Shack. I would stop in and play with it and set the timer, do the challenges,” he says. “I know it was a toy, but that was a real robot.” The Armatron was the hook that lured him into Radio Shack and then sparked his lifelong interest in engineering: “I would roll pennies and use them to buy soldering irons and solder at Radio Shack.”  “There’s research to this day using AI to try to figure out optimal ways to grab objects that [a robot] sees in a bin or out in the world.” Burrell had a fateful reunion with the toy while in grad school for engineering. “One of my office mates had an Armatron at his desk,” he recalls, “and it was broken. We took it apart together, and that was the first time I had seen the guts of it.  “It had this fantastic mechanical gear train to just engage and disengage this one motor in a bunch of different ways. And it was really fascinating that it had done so much—the one little motor. And that sort of got me back thinking about industrial robot arms again.”  Eric Paulos, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, recalls nagging his parents about what an educational gift Armatron would make. Ultimately, he succeeded in his lobbying.  “It was just endless exploration of picking stuff up and moving it around and even just watching it move. It was mesmerizing to me. I felt like I really owned my own little robot,” he recalls. “I cherish this thing. I still have it to this day, and it’s still working.”  The Armatron on the cover of the November/December 1982 issue of Robotics Age magazine.PUBLIC DOMAIN Today, Paulos builds robots and teaches his students how to build their own. He challenges them to solve problems within constraints, such as building with cardboard or Play-Doh; he believes the restrictions facing Watanabe and his team ultimately forced them to be more creative in their engineering. It’s not very hard to draw connections between the Armatron—an impossibly analog robot—and highly advanced machines that are today learning to move in incredible new ways, powered by AI advancements like computer vision and reinforcement learning. Paulos sees parallels between the problems he tackled as a kid with his Armatron and those that researchers are still trying to deal with today: “What happens when you pick things up and they’re too heavy, but you can sort of pick it up if you approach it from different angles? Or how do you grip things? There’s research to this day using AI to try to figure out optimal ways to grab objects that [a robot] sees in a bin or out in the world.” While AI may be taking over the world of robotics, the field still requires engineers—builders and tinkerers who can problem-solve in the physical world.  A page from the 1984 Radio Shack catalogue, featuring the Armatron for $31.95.COURTESY OF RADIOSHACKCATALOGS.COM The Armatron encouraged kids to explore these analog mechanics, a reminder that not all breakthroughs happen on a computer screen. And that hands-on curiosity hasn’t faded. Today, a new generation of fans are rediscovering the Armatron through online communities and DIY modifications. Dozens of Armatron videos are on YouTube, including one where the arm has been modified to run on steam power.  “I’m very happy to see people who love mechanisms are amazed,” Watanabe told me. “I’m really happy that there are still people out there who love our products in this way.”  Jon Keegan writes about technology and AI and publishes Beautiful Public Data, a curated collection of government data sets (beautifulpublicdata.com).