Nintendo has given a number of Switch 1 games some extensive upgrades on the Switch 2, but none more so than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom. Not only do both titles look and run much better on the new hardware, with crisper visuals and smoother frame rates, they can also sync up with a brand-new companion service called Zelda Notes. But as novel as some of its features can be, the service often contradicts the games' most captivating qualities--their sense of discovery.Accessed through the Nintendo Switch mobile app, Zelda Notes offers a suite of features to supplement your adventure in Hyrule. You can view detailed records of your own playthrough, including the number of enemies you've slain and materials you've collected, as well as global stats to see how you stack up with the wider player base. The service also has its own achievements system in the form of medals, which are awarded when you hit different milestones (such as using Zonai powers 1,000 times), along with a function to share items and autobuild designs with other players.All of this is neat, but inessential; you can play through either title without once consulting the app and your adventure would not feel any less fulfilling. However, one feature that does have an appreciable impact on the experience is Navigation. On top of being a repository of personal stats, Zelda Notes can effectively act as a GPS for your game, leading you to a specific point of interest or collectible. As you're exploring Hyrule, the service displays your current location on the map along with an extensive list of things to discover around the kingdom, from shrines and cave entrances to different treasures and enemies. Select a destination--such as a Korok you've yet to find--and the app will guide you there with audio directions, helping you mop up any collectibles you've missed or had trouble locating.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Editor’s note: This blog is a part of Into the Omniverse, a series focused on how developers, 3D practitioners and enterprises can transform their workflows using the latest advances in OpenUSD and NVIDIA Omniverse. Simulated driving environments enable engineers to safely and efficiently train, test and validate autonomous vehicles (AVs) across countless real-world and edge-case scenarios without the risks and costs of physical testing. These simulated environments can be created through neural reconstruction of real-world data from AV fleets or generated with world foundation models (WFMs) — neural networks that understand physics and real-world properties. WFMs can be used to generate synthetic datasets for enhanced AV simulation. To help physical AI developers build such simulated environments, NVIDIA unveiled major advances in WFMs at the GTC Paris and CVPR conferences earlier this month. These new capabilities enhance NVIDIA Cosmos — a platform of generative WFMs, advanced tokenizers, guardrails and accelerated data processing tools. Key innovations like Cosmos Predict-2, the Cosmos Transfer-1 NVIDIA preview NIM microservice and Cosmos Reason are improving how AV developers generate synthetic data, build realistic simulated environments and validate safety systems at unprecedented scale. Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), a unified data framework and standard for physical AI applications, enables seamless integration and interoperability of simulation assets across the development pipeline. OpenUSD standardization plays a critical role in ensuring 3D pipelines are built to scale. NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform of application programming interfaces, software development kits and services for building OpenUSD-based physical AI applications, enables simulations from WFMs and neural reconstruction at world scale. Leading AV organizations — including Foretellix, Mcity, Oxa, Parallel Domain, Plus AI and Uber — are among the first to adopt Cosmos models. Foundations for Scalable, Realistic Simulation Cosmos Predict-2, NVIDIA’s latest WFM, generates high-quality synthetic data by predicting future world states from multimodal inputs like text, images and video. This capability is critical for creating temporally consistent, realistic scenarios that accelerate training and validation of AVs and robots. In addition, Cosmos Transfer, a control model that adds variations in weather, lighting and terrain to existing scenarios, will soon be available to 150,000 developers on CARLA, a leading open-source AV simulator. This greatly expands the broad AV developer community’s access to advanced AI-powered simulation tools. Developers can start integrating synthetic data into their own pipelines using the NVIDIA Physical AI Dataset. The latest release includes 40,000 clips generated using Cosmos. Building on these foundations, the Omniverse Blueprint for AV simulation provides a standardized, API-driven workflow for constructing rich digital twins, replaying real-world sensor data and generating new ground-truth data for closed-loop testing. The blueprint taps into OpenUSD’s layer-stacking and composition arcs, which enable developers to collaborate asynchronously and modify scenes nondestructively. This helps create modular, reusable scenario variants to efficiently generate different weather conditions, traffic patterns and edge cases. Driving the Future of AV Safety To bolster the operational safety of AV systems, NVIDIA earlier this year introduced NVIDIA Halos — a comprehensive safety platform that integrates the company’s full automotive hardware and software stack with AI research focused on AV safety. The new Cosmos models — Cosmos Predict- 2, Cosmos Transfer- 1 NIM and Cosmos Reason — deliver further safety enhancements to the Halos platform, enabling developers to create diverse, controllable and realistic scenarios for training and validating AV systems. These models, trained on massive multimodal datasets including driving data, amplify the breadth and depth of simulation, allowing for robust scenario coverage — including rare and safety-critical events — while supporting post-training customization for specialized AV tasks. At CVPR, NVIDIA was recognized as an Autonomous Grand Challenge winner, highlighting its leadership in advancing end-to-end AV workflows. The challenge used OpenUSD’s robust metadata and interoperability to simulate sensor inputs and vehicle trajectories in semi-reactive environments, achieving state-of-the-art results in safety and compliance. Learn more about how developers are leveraging tools like CARLA, Cosmos, and Omniverse to advance AV simulation in this livestream replay: Hear NVIDIA Director of Autonomous Vehicle Research Marco Pavone on the NVIDIA AI Podcast share how digital twins and high-fidelity simulation are improving vehicle testing, accelerating development and reducing real-world risks. Get Plugged Into the World of OpenUSD Learn more about what’s next for AV simulation with OpenUSD by watching the replay of NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s GTC Paris keynote. Looking for more live opportunities to learn more about OpenUSD? Don’t miss sessions and labs happening at SIGGRAPH 2025, August 10–14. Discover why developers and 3D practitioners are using OpenUSD and learn how to optimize 3D workflows with the self-paced “Learn OpenUSD” curriculum for 3D developers and practitioners, available for free through the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute. Explore the Alliance for OpenUSD forum and the AOUSD website. Stay up to date by subscribing to NVIDIA Omniverse news, joining the community and following NVIDIA Omniverse on Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium and X.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 87, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy It’s Officially Too Hot Now Week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about Sabrina Carpenter and Khaby Lame and intimacy coordinators, finally making a dent in Barbarians at the Gate, watching all the Ben Schwartz and Friends I can find on YouTube, planning my days with the new Finalist beta, recklessly installing all the Apple developer betas after WWDC, thoroughly enjoying Dakota Johnson’s current press tour, and trying to clear all my inboxes before I go on parental leave. It’s… going.I also have for you a much-awaited new browser, a surprise update to a great photo editor, a neat trailer for a meh-looking movie, a classic Steve Jobs speech, and much more. Slightly shorter issue this week, sorry; there’s just a lot going on, but I didn’t want to leave y’all hanging entirely. Oh, and: we’ll be off next week, for Juneteenth, vacation, and general summer chaos reasons. We’ll be back in full force after that, though! Let’s get into it.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)The DropDia. I know there are a lot of Arc fans here in the Installerverse, and I know you, like me, will have a lot of feelings about the company’s new and extremely AI-focused browser. Personally, I don’t see leaving Arc anytime soon, but there are some really fascinating ideas (and nice design touches) in Dia already. Snapseed 3.0. I completely forgot Snapseed even existed, and now here’s a really nice update with a bunch of new editing tools and a nice new redesign! As straightforward photo editors go, this is one of the better ones. The new version is only on iOS right now, but I assume it’s heading to Android shortly.“I Tried To Make Something In America.” I was first turned onto the story of the Smarter Scrubber by a great Search Engine episode, and this is a great companion to the story about what it really takes to bring manufacturing back to the US. And why it’s hard to justify.. That link, and the trailer, will only do anything for you if you have a newer iPhone. But even if you don’t care about the movie, the trailer — which actually buzzes in sync with the car’s rumbles and revs — is just really, really cool. Android 16. You can’t get the cool, colorful new look just yet or the desktop mode I am extremely excited about — there’s a lot of good stuff in Android 16 but most of it is coming later. Still, Live Updates look good, and there’s some helpful accessibility stuff, as well.The Infinite Machine Olto. I am such a sucker for any kind of futuristic-looking electric scooter, and this one really hits the sweet spot. Part moped, part e-bike, all Blade Runner vibes. If it wasn’t $3,500, then I would’ve probably ordered one already.The Fujifilm X-E5. I kept wondering why Fujifilm didn’t just make, like, a hundred different great-looking cameras at every imaginable price because everyone wants a camera this cool. Well, here we are! It’s a spin on the X100VI but with interchangeable lenses and a few power-user features. All my photographer friends are going to want this.Call Her Alex. I confess I’m no Call Her Daddy diehard, but I found this two-part doc on Alex Cooper really interesting. Cooper’s story is all about understanding people, the internet, and what it means to feel connected now. It’s all very low-stakes and somehow also existential? It’s only two parts, you should watch it.“Steve Jobs - 2005 Stanford Commencement Address.” For the 20th anniversary of Jobs’ famous (and genuinely fabulous) speech, the Steve Jobs Archive put together a big package of stories, notes, and other materials around the speech. Plus, a newly high-def version of the video. This one’s always worth the 15 minutes.Dune: Awakening. Dune has ascended to the rare territory of “I will check out anything from this franchise, ever, no questions asked.” This game is big on open-world survival and ornithopters, too, so it’s even more my kind of thing. And it’s apparently punishingly difficult in spots.CrowdsourcedHere’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.“I had tried the paper planner in the leather Paper Republic journal but since have moved onto the Remarkable Paper Pro color e-ink device which takes everything you like about paper but makes it editable and color coded. Combine this with a Remarkable planner in PDF format off of Etsy and you are golden.” — Jason“I started reading a manga series from content creator Cory Kenshin called Monsters We Make. So far, I love it. Already preordered Vol. 2.” — Rob“I recently went down the third party controller rabbit hole after my trusty adapted Xbox One controller finally kicked the bucket, and I wanted something I could use across my PC, phone, handheld, Switch, etc. I’ve been playing with the GameSir Cyclone 2 for a few weeks, and it feels really deluxe. The thumbsticks are impossibly smooth and accurate thanks to its TMR joysticks. The face buttons took a second for my brain to adjust to; the short travel distance initially registered as mushy, but once I stopped trying to pound the buttons like I was at the arcade, I found the subtle mechanical click super satisfying.” — Sam“The Apple TV Plus miniseries Long Way Home. It’s Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s fourth Long Way series. This time they are touring some European countries on vintage bikes that they fixed, and it’s such a light-hearted show from two really down to earth humans. Connecting with other people in different cultures and seeing their journey is such a treat!” — Esmael“Podcast recommendation: Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Christianity Today. A deep dive into the Satanic Panic of the 80’s and 90’s.” — Drew“Splatoon 3 (the free Switch 2 update) and the new How to Train Your Dragon.” — Aaron“I can’t put Mario Kart World down. When I get tired of the intense Knockout Tour mode I go to Free Roam and try to knock out P-Switch challenges, some of which are really tough! I’m obsessed.” — Dave“Fable, a cool app for finding books with virtual book clubs. It’s the closest to a more cozy online bookstore with more honest reviews. I just wish you could click on the author’s name to see their other books.” — Astrid“This is the Summer Games Fest week (formerly E3, RIP) and there are a TON of game demos to try out on Steam. One that has caught my attention / play time the most is Wildgate. It’s a team based spaceship shooter where ship crews battle and try to escape with a powerful artifact.” — Sean“Battlefront 2 is back for some reason. Still looks great.” — IanSigning offI have long been fascinated by weather forecasting. I recommend Andrew Blum’s book, The Weather Machine, to people all the time, as a way to understand both how we learned to predict the weather and why it’s a literally culture-changing thing to be able to do so. And if you want to make yourself so, so angry, there’s a whole chunk of Michael Lewis’s book, The Fifth Risk, about how a bunch of companies managed to basically privatize forecasts… based on government data. The weather is a huge business, an extremely powerful political force, and even more important to our way of life than we realize. And we’re really good at predicting the weather!I’ve also been hearing for years that weather forecasting is a perfect use for AI. It’s all about vast quantities of historical data, tiny fluctuations in readings, and finding patterns that often don’t want to be found. So, of course, as soon as I read my colleague Justine Calma’s story about a new Google project called Weather Lab, I spent the next hour poking through the data to see how well DeepMind managed to predict and track recent storms. It’s deeply wonky stuff, but it’s cool to see Big Tech trying to figure out Mother Nature — and almost getting it right. Almost.See you next week!See More:

In April 2025, at the ITER Private Sector Fusion Workshop in Cadarache, something remarkable unfolded. In a room filled with scientists, engineers and software visionaries, the line between big science and commercial innovation began to blur.   Three organisations – Microsoft Research, Arena and Brigantium Engineering – shared how artificial intelligence (AI), already transforming everything from language models to logistics, is now stepping into a new role: helping humanity to unlock the power of nuclear fusion.  Each presenter addressed a different part of the puzzle, but the message was the same: AI isn’t just a buzzword anymore. It’s becoming a real tool – practical, powerful and indispensable – for big science and engineering projects, including fusion.  “If we think of the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, the AI revolution is next – and it’s coming at a pace which is unprecedented,” said Kenji Takeda, director of research incubations at Microsoft Research.  Microsoft’s collaboration with ITER is already in motion. Just a month before the workshop, the two teams signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore how AI can accelerate research and development. This follows ITER’s initial use of Microsoft technology to empower their teams. A chatbot in Azure OpenAI service was developed to help staff navigate technical knowledge, on more than a million ITER documents, using natural conversation. GitHub Copilot assists with coding, while AI helps to resolve IT support tickets – those everyday but essential tasks that keep the lights on.  But Microsoft’s vision goes deeper. Fusion demands materials that can survive extreme conditions – heat, radiation, pressure – and that’s where AI shows a different kind of potential. MatterGen, a Microsoft Research generative AI model for materials, designs entirely new materials based on specific properties. “It’s like ChatGPT,” said Takeda, “but instead of ‘Write me a poem’, we ask it to design a material that can survive as the first wall of a fusion reactor.”  The next step? MatterSim – a simulation tool that predicts how these imagined materials will behave in the real world. By combining generation and simulation, Microsoft hopes to uncover materials that don’t yet exist in any catalogue.  While Microsoft tackles the atomic scale, Arena is focused on a different challenge: speeding up hardware development. As general manager Michael Frei put it: “Software innovation happens in seconds. In hardware, that loop can take months – or years.”  Arena’s answer is Atlas, a multimodal AI platform that acts as an extra set of hands – and eyes – for engineers. It can read data sheets, interpret lab results, analyse circuit diagrams and even interact with lab equipment through software interfaces. “Instead of adjusting an oscilloscope manually,” said Frei, “you can just say, ‘Verify the I2C [inter integrated circuit] protocol’, and Atlas gets it done.”  It doesn’t stop there. Atlas can write and adapt firmware on the fly, responding to real-time conditions. That means tighter feedback loops, faster prototyping and fewer late nights in the lab. Arena aims to make building hardware feel a little more like writing software – fluid, fast and assisted by smart tools.  Fusion, of course, isn’t just about atoms and code – it’s also about construction. Gigantic, one-of-a-kind machines don’t build themselves. That’s where Brigantium Engineering comes in. Founder Lynton Sutton explained how his team uses “4D planning” – a marriage of 3D CAD models and detailed construction schedules – to visualise how everything comes together over time. “Gantt charts are hard to interpret. 3D models are static. Our job is to bring those together,” he said.  The result is a time-lapse-style animation that shows the construction process step by step. It’s proven invaluable for safety reviews and stakeholder meetings. Rather than poring over spreadsheets, teams can simply watch the plan come to life.  And there’s more. Brigantium is bringing these models into virtual reality using Unreal Engine – the same one behind many video games. One recent model recreated ITER’s tokamak pit using drone footage and photogrammetry. The experience is fully interactive and can even run in a web browser. “We’ve really improved the quality of the visualisation,” said Sutton. “It’s a lot smoother; the textures look a lot better. Eventually, we’ll have this running through a web browser, so anybody on the team can just click on a web link to navigate this 4D model.”  Looking forward, Sutton believes AI could help automate the painstaking work of syncing schedules with 3D models. One day, these simulations could reach all the way down to individual bolts and fasteners – not just with impressive visuals, but with critical tools for preventing delays.  Despite the different approaches, one theme ran through all three presentations: AI isn’t just a tool for office productivity. It’s becoming a partner in creativity, problem-solving and even scientific discovery.  Takeda mentioned that Microsoft is experimenting with “world models” inspired by how video games simulate physics. These models learn about the physical world by watching pixels in the form of videos of real phenomena such as plasma behaviour. “Our thesis is that if you showed this AI videos of plasma, it might learn the physics of plasmas,” he said.  It sounds futuristic, but the logic holds. The more AI can learn from the world, the more it can help us understand it – and perhaps even master it. At its heart, the message from the workshop was simple: AI isn’t here to replace the scientist, the engineer or the planner; it’s here to help, and to make their work faster, more flexible and maybe a little more fun. As Takeda put it: “Those are just a few examples of how AI is starting to be used at ITER. And it’s just the start of that journey.”  If these early steps are any indication, that journey won’t just be faster – it might also be more inspired. 

Requisition #: 16890 Our Mission: Powering Innovation That Drives Human Advancement When visionary companies need to know how their world-changing ideas will perform, they close the gap between design and reality with Ansys simulation. For more than 50 years, Ansys software has enabled innovators across industries to push boundaries by using the predictive power of simulation. From sustainable transportation to advanced semiconductors, from satellite systems to life-saving medical devices, the next great leaps in human advancement will be powered by Ansys. Innovate With Ansys, Power Your Career. Summary / Role Purpose The R&D Engineer II contributes to the development of software products and supporting systems. In this role, the R&D Engineer II will collaborate with a team of expert professionals to understand customer requirements and accomplish development objectives. Key Duties and Responsibilities Performs moderately complex development activities, including the design, implementation, maintenance, testing and documentation of software modules and sub-systems Understands and employs best practices Performs moderately complex bug verification, release testing and beta support for assigned products. Researches problems discovered by QA or product support and develops solutions Understands the marketing requirements for a product, including target environment, performance criteria and competitive issues Works under the general supervision of a development manager Minimum Education/Certification Requirements and Experience BS in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Engineering, or other natural science disciplines with 3-5 years' experience or MS with minimum 2 years experience Working experience within technical software development proven by academic, research, or industry projects. Good understanding and skills in object-oriented programming Experience with Java and C# / .NET Role can be remote, must be based on the East Coast due to timezone Preferred Qualifications and Skills Experience with C++, Python, in addition to Java and C# / .NET Knowledge of Task-Based Asynchronous design pattern (TAP) Exposure to model-based systems engineering concepts Working knowledge of SysML Know-how on cloud computing technologies like micro-service architectures, RPC frameworks (e.g., gRPC), REST APIs, etc. Knowledge of software security best practices Experience working on an Agile software development team Technical knowledge and experience with various engineering tools and methodologies, such as Finite Element simulation, CAD modeling, and Systems Architecture modelling is a plus Ability to assist more junior developers on an as-needed basis Ability to learn quickly and to collaborate with others in a geographically distributed team Excellent communication and interpersonal skills At Ansys, we know that changing the world takes vision, skill, and each other. We fuel new ideas, build relationships, and help each other realize our greatest potential. We are ONE Ansys. We operate on three key components: our commitments to stakeholders, our values that guide how we work together, and our actions to deliver results. As ONE Ansys, we are powering innovation that drives human advancement Our Commitments:Amaze with innovative products and solutionsMake our customers incredibly successfulAct with integrityEnsure employees thrive and shareholders prosper Our Values:Adaptability: Be open, welcome what's nextCourage: Be courageous, move forward passionatelyGenerosity: Be generous, share, listen, serveAuthenticity: Be you, make us stronger Our Actions:We commit to audacious goalsWe work seamlessly as a teamWe demonstrate masteryWe deliver outstanding resultsVALUES IN ACTION Ansys is committed to powering the people who power human advancement. We believe in creating and nurturing a workplace that supports and welcomes people of all backgrounds; encouraging them to bring their talents and experience to a workplace where they are valued and can thrive. Our culture is grounded in our four core values of adaptability, courage, generosity, and authenticity. Through our behaviors and actions, these values foster higher team performance and greater innovation for our customers. We're proud to offer programs, available to all employees, to further impact innovation and business outcomes, such as employee networks and learning communities that inform solutions for our globally minded customer base. WELCOME WHAT'S NEXT IN YOUR CAREER AT ANSYS At Ansys, you will find yourself among the sharpest minds and most visionary leaders across the globe. Collectively, we strive to change the world with innovative technology and transformational solutions. With a prestigious reputation in working with well-known, world-class companies, standards at Ansys are high - met by those willing to rise to the occasion and meet those challenges head on. Our team is passionate about pushing the limits of world-class simulation technology, empowering our customers to turn their design concepts into successful, innovative products faster and at a lower cost. Ready to feel inspired? Check out some of our recent customer stories, here and here . At Ansys, it's about the learning, the discovery, and the collaboration. It's about the "what's next" as much as the "mission accomplished." And it's about the melding of disciplined intellect with strategic direction and results that have, can, and do impact real people in real ways. All this is forged within a working environment built on respect, autonomy, and ethics.CREATING A PLACE WE'RE PROUD TO BEAnsys is an S&P 500 company and a member of the NASDAQ-100. We are proud to have been recognized for the following more recent awards, although our list goes on: Newsweek's Most Loved Workplace globally and in the U.S., Gold Stevie Award Winner, America's Most Responsible Companies, Fast Company World Changing Ideas, Great Place to Work Certified (China, Greece, France, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and U.K.).For more information, please visit us at Ansys is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other protected characteristics.Ansys does not accept unsolicited referrals for vacancies, and any unsolicited referral will become the property of Ansys. Upon hire, no fee will be owed to the agency, person, or entity.Apply NowLet's start your dream job Apply now Meet JobCopilot: Your Personal AI Job HunterAutomatically Apply to Remote Full-Stack Programming JobsJust set your preferences and Job Copilot will do the rest-finding, filtering, and applying while you focus on what matters. Activate JobCopilot

Jun 16, 2025Ravie LakshmananMalware / DevOps Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that's capable of harvesting sensitive developer-related information, such as credentials, configuration data, and environment variables, among others. The package, named chimera-sandbox-extensions, attracted 143 downloads and likely targets users of a service called Chimera Sandbox, which was released by Singaporean tech company Grab last August to facilitate "experimentation and development of [machine learning] solutions." The package masquerades as a helper module for Chimera Sandbox, but "aims to steal credentials and other sensitive information such as Jamf configuration, CI/CD environment variables, AWS tokens, and more," JFrog security researcher Guy Korolevski said in a report published last week. Once installed, it attempts to connect to an external domain whose domain name is generated using a domain generation algorithm (DGA) in order to download and execute a next-stage payload. Specifically, the malware acquires from the domain an authentication token, which is then used to send a request to the same domain and retrieve the Python-based information stealer. The stealer malware is equipped to siphon a wide range of data from infected machines. This includes - JAMF receipts, which are records of software packages installed by Jamf Pro on managed computers Pod sandbox environment authentication tokens and git information CI/CD information from environment variables Zscaler host configuration Amazon Web Services account information and tokens Public IP address General platform, user, and host information The kind of data gathered by the malware shows that it's mainly geared towards corporate and cloud infrastructure. In addition, the extraction of JAMF receipts indicates that it's also capable of targeting Apple macOS systems. The collected information is sent via a POST request back to the same domain, after which the server assesses if the machine is a worthy target for further exploitation. However, JFrog said it was unable to obtain the payload at the time of analysis. "The targeted approach employed by this malware, along with the complexity of its multi-stage targeted payload, distinguishes it from the more generic open-source malware threats we have encountered thus far, highlighting the advancements that malicious packages have made recently," Jonathan Sar Shalom, director of threat research at JFrog Security Research team, said. "This new sophistication of malware underscores why development teams remain vigilant with updates—alongside proactive security research – to defend against emerging threats and maintain software integrity." The disclosure comes as SafeDep and Veracode detailed a number of malware-laced npm packages that are designed to execute remote code and download additional payloads. The packages in question are listed below - eslint-config-airbnb-compat (676 Downloads) ts-runtime-compat-check (1,588 Downloads) solders (983 Downloads) @mediawave/lib (386 Downloads) All the identified npm packages have since been taken down from npm, but not before they were downloaded hundreds of times from the package registry. SafeDep's analysis of eslint-config-airbnb-compat found that the JavaScript library has ts-runtime-compat-check listed as a dependency, which, in turn, contacts an external server defined in the former package ("proxy.eslint-proxy[.]site") to retrieve and execute a Base64-encoded string. The exact nature of the payload is unknown. "It implements a multi-stage remote code execution attack using a transitive dependency to hide the malicious code," SafeDep researcher Kunal Singh said. Solders, on the other hand, has been found to incorporate a post-install script in its package.json, causing the malicious code to be automatically executed as soon as the package is installed. "At first glance, it's hard to believe that this is actually valid JavaScript," the Veracode Threat Research team said. "It looks like a seemingly random collection of Japanese symbols. It turns out that this particular obfuscation scheme uses the Unicode characters as variable names and a sophisticated chain of dynamic code generation to work." Decoding the script reveals an extra layer of obfuscation, unpacking which reveals its main function: Check if the compromised machine is Windows, and if so, run a PowerShell command to retrieve a next-stage payload from a remote server ("firewall[.]tel"). This second-stage PowerShell script, also obscured, is designed to fetch a Windows batch script from another domain ("cdn.audiowave[.]org") and configures a Windows Defender Antivirus exclusion list to avoid detection. The batch script then paves the way for the execution of a .NET DLL that reaches out to a PNG image hosted on ImgBB ("i.ibb[.]co"). "[The DLL] is grabbing the last two pixels from this image and then looping through some data contained elsewhere in it," Veracode said. "It ultimately builds up in memory YET ANOTHER .NET DLL." Furthermore, the DLL is equipped to create task scheduler entries and features the ability to bypass user account control (UAC) using a combination of FodHelper.exe and programmatic identifiers (ProgIDs) to evade defenses and avoid triggering any security alerts to the user. The newly-downloaded DLL is Pulsar RAT, a "free, open-source Remote Administration Tool for Windows" and a variant of the Quasar RAT. "From a wall of Japanese characters to a RAT hidden within the pixels of a PNG file, the attacker went to extraordinary lengths to conceal their payload, nesting it a dozen layers deep to evade detection," Veracode said. "While the attacker's ultimate objective for deploying the Pulsar RAT remains unclear, the sheer complexity of this delivery mechanism is a powerful indicator of malicious intent." Crypto Malware in the Open-Source Supply Chain The findings also coincide with a report from Socket that identified credential stealers, cryptocurrency drainers, cryptojackers, and clippers as the main types of threats targeting the cryptocurrency and blockchain development ecosystem. Some of the examples of these packages include - express-dompurify and pumptoolforvolumeandcomment, which are capable of harvesting browser credentials and cryptocurrency wallet keys bs58js, which drains a victim's wallet and uses multi-hop transfers to obscure theft and frustrate forensic tracing. lsjglsjdv, asyncaiosignal, and raydium-sdk-liquidity-init, which functions as a clipper to monitor the system clipboard for cryptocurrency wallet strings and replace them with threat actor‑controlled addresses to reroute transactions to the attackers "As Web3 development converges with mainstream software engineering, the attack surface for blockchain-focused projects is expanding in both scale and complexity," Socket security researcher Kirill Boychenko said. "Financially motivated threat actors and state-sponsored groups are rapidly evolving their tactics to exploit systemic weaknesses in the software supply chain. These campaigns are iterative, persistent, and increasingly tailored to high-value targets." AI and Slopsquatting The rise of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted coding, also called vibe coding, has unleashed another novel threat in the form of slopsquatting, where large language models (LLMs) can hallucinate non-existent but plausible package names that bad actors can weaponize to conduct supply chain attacks. Trend Micro, in a report last week, said it observed an unnamed advanced agent "confidently" cooking up a phantom Python package named starlette-reverse-proxy, only for the build process to crash with the error "module not found." However, should an adversary upload a package with the same name on the repository, it can have serious security consequences. Furthermore, the cybersecurity company noted that advanced coding agents and workflows such as Claude Code CLI, OpenAI Codex CLI, and Cursor AI with Model Context Protocol (MCP)-backed validation can help reduce, but not completely eliminate, the risk of slopsquatting. "When agents hallucinate dependencies or install unverified packages, they create an opportunity for slopsquatting attacks, in which malicious actors pre-register those same hallucinated names on public registries," security researcher Sean Park said. "While reasoning-enhanced agents can reduce the rate of phantom suggestions by approximately half, they do not eliminate them entirely. Even the vibe-coding workflow augmented with live MCP validations achieves the lowest rates of slip-through, but still misses edge cases." Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE    

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.comEnjoy!What was Radiant AI, anyway? - A ridiculously deep dive into Oblivion's controversial AI system and its legacyblog.paavo.meConsider The Horse Game - No I don’t think every dev should make a horse game (unlike horror, which I still think everyone should at least one). But I do think every developer should at least look at them, maybe even play one because, it is very important that you understand the importance of genre, fandom, and how visibility works. Even if you are not making a horse game, the lessons you can learn by looking at this sub genre are very similar to other genres, just not as blatantly clear as they are with horse games.howtomarketagame.comMaking a killing: The playful 2D terror of Psycasso® - I sat down with lead developer Benjamin Lavender and Omni, designer and producer, to talk about this playfully gory game that gives a classic retro style and a fresh (if gruesome) twist.UnityIntroduction to Asset Manager transfer methods in Unity - Unity's Asset Manager is a user-friendly digital asset management platform supporting over 70 file formats to help teams centralize, organize, discover, and use assets seamlessly across projects. It reduces redundant work by design, making cross-team collaboration smoother and accelerating production workflows.UnityVideosRules of the Game: Five Tricks of Highly Effective Designers - Every working designer has them: unique techniques or "tricks" that they use when crafting gameplay. Sure, there's the general game design wisdom that everyone agrees on and can be found in many a game design book, but experienced game designers often have very specific rules that are personal to them, techniques that not everyone knows about or even agrees with. In this GDC 2015 session, five experienced game designers join the stage for 10 minutes each to share one game design "trick" that they use.Game Developers ConferenceBinding of Isaac Style Room Generator in Unity [Full Tutorial] - Our third part in the series - making the rooms!Game Dev GarnetIntroduction to Unity Behavior | Unity Tutorial - In this video you'll become familiar with the core concepts of Unity Behavior, including a live example.LlamAcademyHow I got my demo ready for Steam Next Fest - It's Steam Next Fest, and I've got a game in the showcase. So here are 7 tips for making the most of this demo sharing festival.Game Maker's ToolkitOptimizing lighting in Projekt Z: Beyond Order - 314 Arts studio lead and founder Justin Miersch discuss how the team used the Screen Space Global Illumination feature in Unity’s High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), along with the Unity Profiler and Timeline to overcome the lighting challenges they faced in building Projekt Z: Beyond Order.UnityMemory Arenas in Unity: Heap Allocation Without the GC - In this video, we explore how to build a custom memory arena in Unity using unsafe code and manual heap allocation. You’ll learn how to allocate raw memory for temporary graph-like structures—such as crafting trees or decision planners—without triggering the garbage collector. We’ll walk through the concept of stack frames, translate that to heap-based arena allocation, and implement a fast, disposable system that gives you full control over memory layout and lifetime. 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You don't have to go for the paid software options. Image: Timothy Exodus/Unsplash Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Most of us are signed up to plenty of digital subscriptions, covering streaming services, cloud storage, fitness apps, and plenty more. This extends to software subscriptions, too: Both Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office (now Microsoft 365) ask for monthly or yearly subscriptions if you want to stay up to date. Add up $5 here and $10 there and you can soon find yourself paying out more each week than you want. What you might not know is that for just about every paid software program out there, there’s a perfectly adequate and free replacement—so you can cut your dependency on software subscriptions right down. GIMP is an image editor packed with features. Screenshot: GIMP The rather oddly named GIMP—it stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program—is a head-on challenger to Adobe Photoshop, with a lot of the same advanced features on offer across object selections and manipulations, layers, and effects. GIMP doesn’t have as much AI stuffed into it as Photoshop does, but you might see that as a benefit. Whether you want to touch up and enhance the photos you’ve taken, or you want to create digital art, GIMP can handle it all. Open up the software and you’ll see you get a wealth of tools to play around with; there are plenty of third-party extensions and customizations available too—plus lots of tutorials and more help on the web. Download GIMP for Windows or macOS. LibreOffice Writer is a solid alternative to Microsoft Word. Screenshot: LibreOffice Microsoft Office is now called Microsoft 365, but however you refer to it, it’s anchored by Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. While Microsoft asks for a one-off fee or regular subscription, you can use LibreOffice completely free of charge—including the equivalent apps Writer (documents), Calc (spreadsheets), and Impress (presentations). If you have any experience using the Microsoft apps, you’ll feel right at home inside the LibreOffice apps—and they can import and export using Office file formats too. And just because you’re not paying for the software doesn’t mean you’re missing out on features, because these programs come backed with a host of useful options and tools. Download LibreOffice for Windows or macOS. Watch as much as you want on Tubi, for free. Screenshot: Tubi When it comes to movies and shows, there are plenty of services that will charge you a fee for access, including Netflix. Not so Tubi, which is completely funded by ads. Okay, it might not have the latest and greatest selection of titles, but there’s still plenty to watch, completely free. You aren’t going to run out of viewing material anytime soon. Tubi is one of a growing number of FAST streaming services, which stands for free ad-supported streaming television; others you might want to check out include Pluto TV and the Roku Channel. While content on these platforms is usually older than on the alternatives, you’ll probably be surprised at how much good stuff there is. Watch Tubi on the web, or on Android or iOS. Use KeePass as your password manager KeePass is a simple, straightforward password manager. Screenshot: KeePass We’ve written before about the benefits of using a password manager, but most of them require a subscription to use all of their features. If a password manager offers a free plan at all, it usually restricts how many passwords you can save or how many devices you can sync between, or apply some other limitations. KeePass is different, as it’s completely free and open source (so you can look at the source code yourself, if you wish). It comes with plenty of features to keep your passwords private and secure, and while there’s only an official version for Windows, there are several unofficial ports so you can sync your passwords across macOS, Android, and iOS too. Download KeePass for Windows. Create videos with ease with OpenShot. Screenshot: OpenShot We’ll finish where we started, with an alternative to a program from the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. Unless you’re a professional filmmaker who needs the very best in industry-standard tools, OpenShot will give you everything you need in video editing features and options, and it’s capable of some impressive results. The extensive list includes support for key frame animations, an unlimited number of tracks, easy-to-use scaling and trimming tools, compositing, image overlays, title creating (including 3D titles), and support for a broad range of video, audio, and image formats. Despite all of those features and more, you won’t find it difficult to use. Download OpenShot for Windows or macOS.

Michael Davies is head of Stix Design, the graphic design and branding arm of architecture firm Sheppard Robson. He’s worked on BBC Cardiff, UCL Marshgate and Freshfields law firm’s London HQ. Design What would your monograph be called? No, I don’t shop at High and Mighty. I am the first-born son of West African parents, and growing up, I stood out because I was very tall – I’m now 6’ 7” – and also one of the only black kids at school. This led to a strong desire to fit in. Maybe this has made me always feel really comfortable as part of the team, working shoulder-to-shoulder to create work that stands out. But, of course, this instinct to collaborate is balanced with my idiosyncrasies and expressing my own perspectives on work and life. And yes, I shop at the same places as everyone else. What recent design work made you a bit jealous? I really like the wayfinding scheme at Borough Yards by f.r.a. When I first went there, the designs really spoke to me as a body of work. The work hit every button – intuition, intrigue, interaction, story-telling. The lot. It’s how I would love to have answered the brief. f.r.a.’s wayfinding work at Borough Yards What’s an unusual place you get inspiration from? I have a few. Salts Mill at Saltaire – a former mill housing art galleries, shops, and cafe and diner – and The Pheasantry Cafe at Bushy Park, but my current favourite has to be the ground floor cafe at the V&A. The sheer scale of its beauty and ambience is always surprising. They’ll throw in a quartet every now and then, in case you might think it isn’t atmospheric enough. It’s great for people-watching, too – I bet it’s a good spot for writers. Name something that is brilliantly designed, but overlooked. It has to be a brand new pencil. The very sight of one conjures up so much potential before you’ve even made a mark. What object in your studio best sums up your taste? Perhaps not strictly an object, but I Iove the cupboard-sized meeting room in the far corner of the second floor of our Camden office. It has a huge, cantilevered window that looks out onto our green roof. In the summer it turns into a full-on meadow. It’s a great place to feel the breeze, feel connected to nature and think. The view from the second floor meeting room Leadership What feedback felt brutal at the time, but turned out to be useful? Earlier in my senior career I worked for someone who’d employed a number of us from a previous agency. The familiarity was a key factor in why I took the position. A good friend and design director there advised me to step up and assume full responsibility for all aspects of the projects I worked on – “Don’t wait for instruction from your design leader, try to come forward with solutions rather than asking what should you do.” His implication was, “Don’t be too comfortable” and try not to lean into my design leader too often. Be more proactive. This proved to be a difficult period of transition for me at the time, with lots of sleepless nights questioning my every decision. Eventually, I learned there’s a value to making mistakes as it afforded me the opportunity to grow. That outcome was career-changing. What’s an underappreciated skill that design leaders need? Make the process as enjoyable as you can. A little self-deprecation and good humour goes a long way. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and be honest with praise – say when something goes well or looks great, just as you would when it doesn’t. What keeps you up at night? I work with a smallish team in a large organisation, so occasionally, several jobs might come in from different directions, all at the same time. That can be quite stressful. There’s always that one job that’s taking too long to land, you take on others to fill the gap and then it suddenly drops – arrrgh! What trait is non-negotiable in new hires? Working alongside so many different skill-sets here at Sheppard Robson affords us the luxury of attacking problems from all sides. The key to doing this successfully is through open lines of communication. I need good communicators and great listeners. Their work will always speak for itself, but those two traits make all the difference. Complete this sentence, “I wish more clients…” …would allow us to just lead the way. I know this isn’t always easy for clients, seeing as creativity is a totally different language/science to some. However, there’s no need to fight the process. Take your time selecting the right agency, then trust us, and enjoy the journey.