• The Sound Blaster Katana V2X is a walking disaster.  (Ars Technica)
  
  It's a USB speaker.  How bad can it be?
  
  Well, it is a USB speaker, yes.  It also supports Bluetooth connectivity for your mobile devices.  At the same time.
  
  And it makes it easy to upgrade the firmware should you need to do so.
  
  Over Bluetooth.  Without authentication.  While it is plugged into your PC.
  
  Meaning that anyone within Bluetooth range can reprogram it with arbitrary functionality.  Make it open Powershell and wipe your hard drive?  Sure.  The only problem there is the lack of imagination.
  
  Oh, and Bluetooth is always on, even when the device is powered down to "sleep" mode, so just turning it off won't save you.
  
  Creative - the company that sells Sound Blaster devices - states that it does not regard this as a vulnerability, which leaves me to wonder what kind of creeping cosmic horrors they would regard as vulnerabilities.
  
  

• AMD's next-generation RDNA5 graphics cards are expected in the second half of next year.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A little over two years after we first saw RDNA4.
  
  We may see RTX 6000 series cards from Nvidia around the same time, but that's a fuzzier prediction.
  
  
  
• Suffering from the memory drought?  Retropad is a Windows Notepad clone that weighs in at 2794 bytes.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which was honestly never a lot.
  
  
  
• ASML is now Europe's most valuable company at around $650 billion.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's actually respectable, though it would only rank 15th on the US stock market - between AMD and Exxon Mobil.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 08 2026 09:50 PM (1zWbY)

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