A recent study published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts provides evidence that the human brain applies different standards of beauty depending on the type of visual art it evaluates. By comparing the visual properties of historical building facades and artistic paintings, scientists found that architects and painters weigh aesthetic features like symmetry and complexity quite differently.
When people look at an image, their appreciation of its beauty relies on several visual variables. These variables include properties such as color, balance, symmetry, complexity, and the relationship between the main subject and its background. Psychological theories of visual perception propose that humans tend to prefer sensory properties that the brain can process easily.
“I have been interested in the Valuation System of the brain, the network that learns and deploys values for decision-making,” said Norberto Grzywacz, a professor of psychology at Loyola University Chicago. “In particular, I have had interests in aesthetic values, which this system also processes. At some point, I asked myself whether aesthetic values in a sensory domain, for example vision, are universal or specific to different domains.”
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a high-severity security flaw impacting Oracle WebLogic Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.
The vulnerability, CVE-2024–21182 (CVSS score: 7.5), allows an unauthenticated attacker with network access to take control of susceptible servers. It was patched by Oracle in July 2024.
“Oracle WebLogic contains an unspecified vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker with network access via T3, IIOP to compromise Oracle WebLogic Server,” CISA said.
Multiple Instagram users had their accounts hijacked after attackers convinced Meta’s AI-powered support tools that they were the legitimate owners.
In many cases, impacted users are unable to recover access due to the platform’s use of automated assistance that involves only AI/chatbot loops and no human support agents.
On Monday, multiple holders of rare and high-value accounts reported suddenly losing access to their accounts, claiming that their identities had been verified via facial scans and that they had enabled safeguards such as two-factor authentication (2FA).
Microsoft announced today at its Build 2026 developer conference the release of Coreutils for Windows, bringing many commonly used Linux command-line utilities to Windows as native applications.
The project is based on the open-source uutils project, a cross-platform rewrite of the GNU coreutils in Rust, and is designed to make it easier for developers to switch between Linux, macOS, Windows, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) without changing workflows.
“Developers constantly move between platforms, but familiar commands don’t work consistently, forcing workarounds, lost speed and context switching,” announced Microsoft.
Hackers are exploiting a critical privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2026–8206) in the Kirki plugin for WordPress to take over any user account, including those belonging to administrators.
The attacks were detected by WordPress security firm Defiant, whose Wordfence firewall blocked over 222 attempts against its customers in the past 24 hours.
The full name of the plugin is Kirki — Freeform Page Builder, Website Builder & Customizer. It is a freeform visual builder and advanced theme customizer active on more than 500,000 websites.