A new quantum-inspired algorithm is reshaping how scientists approach some of the most complex materials known, enabling rapid analysis of structures that were previously beyond computational reach.
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Genetic parallelism underpins convergent mimicry coloration in Lepidoptera across 120 million years of evolution
The repeated evolution of similar phenotypes, or convergent evolution, is widespread in nature, but there are few studies investigating the genetic mechanisms across wide evolutionary timescales. This study examines convergent wing pattern evolution across highly divergent Lepidopteran lineages and reports parallel genetic reuse, indicating strong constraints and high predictability in evolutionary outcomes.
CISA Adds Actively Exploited Linux Root Access Bug CVE-2026–31431 to KEV
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added a recently disclosed security flaw impacting various Linux distributions to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026–31431 (CVSS score: 7.8), is a case of local privilege escalation (LPE) flaw that could allow an unprivileged local user to obtain root. The nine-year-old flaw is also tracked as Copy Fail by Theori and Xint. Fixes have been made available in Linux kernel versions 6.18.22, 6.19.12, and 7.0.
“Linux Kernel contains an incorrect resource transfer between spheres vulnerability that could allow for privilege escalation,” CISA said in an advisory.
Amazon SES increasingly abused in phishing to evade detection
The Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is being increasingly abused to send convincing phishing emails that can bypass standard security filters and render reputation-based blocks ineffective.
Although the resource has been leveraged for malicious activity in the past, the current spike may be due to a large number of AWS Identity and Access Management access keys exposed in public assets.
Because it is a legitimate, trusted resource, phishing operations can leverage Amazon SES to send out malicious emails that pass authentication checks.
Backdoored PyTorch Lightning package drops credential stealer
A malicious version of the PyTorch Lightning package published on the Python Package Index (PyPI) delivers a credential-stealing payload targeting browsers, environment files, and cloud services.
The developer disclosed the supply-chain attack on April 30, saying that version 2.6.3 of the package included a hidden execution chain that downloads and executes a JavaScript payload.
PyTorch Lightning is a deep learning framework used for pretraining and fine-tuning AI models. It is a popular package, amassing more than 11 million downloads last month.
How a ‘90s Zelda PC port became a fangame factory, turning one legend into a thousand
The same way you might play Dragon Quest and rush to assemble a tribute in RPG Maker, players have been making their own old-school adventures in ZQuest for decades. The results range from the quaint to the damn near authentic, and the cream of the crop is collected on a database-slash-forum called PureZC. It’s a visually lean, community-driven treasure trove the likes of which I didn’t think existed on the internet anymore. Custom games, all of which are called “quests” and disseminated as.qst files to be plugged into ZQuest, are split up into a few genres: Metroidvania, NES-style, dungeon romper, randomizer, and so on.
Like Venezia and Clark said, you can go a long way without writing so much as a line of code (though the option is there, should you opt to push the engine beyond its normal scope using the ZScript language). A fan favorite metroidvania quest from 2024, The Deep, features puzzles that incorporate shadows and fog, conveyor belts, a hookshot like you might remember from A Link to the Past, and all sorts of other novelties.
It’s easy to see how it took home the gold in a community contest, but all the more intriguing when you learn it did so in a “non-scripted bracket” and was built in just over three weeks. Bigger, multi-year endeavors like Lost Isle and The Hero of Dreams are lengthy and fully-featured games in their own right—projects that, if you squint, look and feel remarkably like unreleased Game Boy Advance games. While the quests are diverse, numbering over a thousand, reverence for the 40-year-old Nintendo series is the one thing that makes it all cohere.