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Microsoft blames Windows gaming issues on RGB lighting devices

Microsoft says ongoing issues causing games to crash or fail to launch after installing the August 2026 Windows updates may be caused by peripherals with RGB lighting.

As Microsoft explained when it confirmed it’s investigating on Wednesday, this known issue affects games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals on systems running Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2.

“Following the release of Windows updates on August 11, 2026 (KB5121003) and later, Microsoft received reports of issues involving inability to run games as expected,” Microsoft said on the Windows release health dashboard.

New SynkLoader malware pushed in Microsoft Teams phishing campaign

A previously unknown malware family dubbed SynkLoader is being distributed in Microsoft Teams phishing campaigns to steal credentials via a fake lock screen.

The attacker impersonates the target company’s IT help desk, a tactic Microsoft highlighted earlier this year as increasingly common in multi-stage attacks.

Expel’s security researcher Marcus Hutchins explains that the attacks direct the victim to install a fake “PowerShell Cleaner” executable (.MSI) hosted in Microsoft Azure, making the download appear trustworthy.

Throwing Like a Girl: Is Biology Allowed to Explain Anything?

Fausto-Sterling is not an incidental figure in modern debates about sex. Her famous 1993 essay The Five Sexes helped popularize the idea that the familiar male-female binary is biologically inadequate. She proposed additional “sexes” based on intersex conditions and argued more broadly that sex should be understood as a continuum.

Those arguments became enormously influential. In our view, they also created lasting confusion by encouraging people to mistake variation in sexual development for evidence that biological sex itself is not binary. But when it comes to sexual reproduction, the distinction is straightforward: females are organized around producing ova and males around producing sperm. There is no third gamete type or reproductive role, and intersex conditions do not create one.

One of us has examined these arguments in an essay for Skeptic. Other evolutionary biologists, including Colin Wright, have also offered detailed treatments of the issue.

Early Evolution of Life: Publication in Science Advances

Because an organism isn’t truly “alive” in the biological sense until it can survive as an autonomous, free-living cell, the researchers reached a radical conclusion.

How and where did the first forms of life arise? These are the main questions driving research at the Institute of Molecular Evolution at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU). In a new publication in Science Advances, an international team led by Düsseldorf biologists uncovers pioneering insights into the network of chemical reactions that the very first cells used to make the building blocks of life and which sources of energy they used to drive those reactions. They retraced the origin of enzymes during life’s earliest divergence into bacteria and archaea, and found evidence for two independent origins of life for free-living cells.

Astronomers pin down the origins of a planetary odd couple

In a study appearing today in Astrophysical Journal Letters, the scientists report on new measurements of the mini-Neptune’s atmosphere, made using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It is the first time astronomers have measured the composition of a mini-Neptune that resides inside the orbit of a hot Jupiter.

Their measurements reveal that the smaller planet has a “heavy” atmosphere that is rich with water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and hints of methane. Such a heavy atmosphere would not have been acquired by the planet if it had formed in its current location, very close to its star.

Instead, the scientists say their findings point to an alternate origin story: Both the mini-Neptune and the hot Jupiter may have formed much farther away, in the colder region of the protoplanetary disk. There, the planets could slowly build up atmospheres of ice and other volatiles. Over time, the planets were likely drawn in toward the star in a gradual process that kept them close, with their atmospheres intact.

INTerpath001 Trial: Personalized mRNA Cancer Vaccine for Melanoma

The positive Phase 3 result therefore provides clinical validation, at the level of RFS and DMFS, of a strategy combining individualized neoantigen-directed immunotherapy with established PD-1 blockade.

It is important, however, not to extend the current findings beyond what the trial has demonstrated.

INTerpath-001 establishes efficacy endpoints in resected high-risk cutaneous melanoma. It does not yet establish that the same approach will be effective across other tumor types, nor does the currently available topline information identify which molecular or immunological characteristics predict benefit from the individualized therapy.

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