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TL;DR: Convert and edit PDFs on Mac or Windows with a lifetime license to AcePDF Converter & Editor, now $23.99 (reg. $99.99) with code DEAL20.

Opens in a new window Credit: Acethinker AcePDF Converter & Editor: Lifetime License $24
$99.99 Save $75.99   Get Deal

PDFs show up everywhere, from tax forms to rental applications, and most of them arrive in a format you can’t easily change. Full-featured PDF software usually fixes that with a monthly subscription. If you’d rather pay once, try AcePDF Converter & Editor, a desktop app that turns PDFs into editable files and back again. With code DEAL20, a lifetime license drops to $23.99 (reg. $99.99).

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Scanned documents are usually where basic PDF tools give up. AcePDF has built-in OCR that extracts text from image-based PDFs in multiple languages, so an old scanned contract or a photographed receipt becomes text you can copy and edit.

Page tools come along with the converter. You can merge several PDFs into one, split out only the pages you need, rotate or delete pages, and pull every JPG and PNG out of a file in one click. Oversized files can be compressed for email, and a password can lock a sensitive document or unlock one you already have the password for. Forms get attention too. You can design an interactive form from scratch or fill an existing one with text, check boxes, shapes, and annotations, then add watermarks, stamps, and comments as needed.

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AcePDF runs on Windows 8, 10, and 11, plus macOS 12 or later with full Apple Silicon support. One license works on two computers, and updates are included. Conversion does need an internet connection. You’ll have 30 days after purchase to redeem your code.

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StackSocial prices subject to change.

One of the big benefits of Samsung devices is that they are pretty deeply customizable. However, if you're looking to take things a step further, then you absolutely need Good Lock. It is a free and official suite of modules designed by Samsung to give Galaxy users the ability to deeply personalize their devices, boost productivity, and streamline navigation.

Being born in the 2000s, I hardly got the chance to use any of the old operating systems many people talk about. As a Linux user, this topic always fascinates me. How old operating systems worked, what they offered, and most importantly, how they shaped modern OSes.

Microsoft researchers have discovered “Lazarus,” a backdoor technique that can reprogram dormant neurons in an AI model, causing an otherwise normal AI agent to execute malicious commands when a hidden trigger appears.

The threat is especially serious for AI agents with tool or terminal access. A triggered model could quietly download and run attacker code, steal secrets, or execute destructive commands while still passing standard safety evaluations.

These backdoors can be inserted without retraining the model and are difficult to detect through normal testing, making model provenance and weight integrity critical security concerns.

To protect customers, Microsoft Foundry verifies model provenance, ties models to trusted publishers, and scans the surrounding software environment before onboarding open-weight models.

Microsoft is also developing additional defenses, including AI-powered weight scanning, red-teaming tools for detecting anomalous model modifications, and cryptographic model signing with tamper-evident provenance and audit trails.

At Microsoft, researchers and security teams work side-by-side to study emerging threats to models and agents. Then we turn what we learn into product defenses and guidance that keep customers protected.

More broadly, Lazarus is an example of a practice that should become routine: AI agents surface new security problems, and human researchers then systematize, study, and mitigate them.

Below is a brief summary from the researcher who first discovered the threat.

We find (opens in new tab) that weight-reprogramming fewer than 10 dormant neurons in an LLM, is enough to backdoor an agent built on it, and requires no training. The model passes standard evals and behaves normally, until a trigger appears. The trigger can be as mundane as a date change, e.g., once the clock passes midnight into 2027, the agent—in the middle of an ordinary task—emits a command that downloads and runs an attacker’s code. The agent then executes it with whatever access you gave it.

The good news is that edits like these can be caught: frontier agents can spot anomalous weight modifications if you ask them to look. But no scan can prove beyond any doubt that a model is safe. Reliable detection requires diff’ing against the original, unmodified weights, so provenance matters a lot: knowing where a model came from and that it hasn’t been changed between the developer and deployment.

Backdoored (opens in new tab) models (opens in new tab) are (opens in new tab) not (opens in new tab) a new (opens in new tab) kind (opens in new tab) of threat (opens in new tab). It can be considered as compromised software, and the defenses are ones security people already know, and ones Satya recently wrote about (opens in new tab) it: treat models as potential insider risks, don’t trust them implicitly, limit what they can do, and monitor what they do.

What Microsoft does today.

Microsoft Foundry provides critical safety systems for Azure Direct Models and Hugging Face models to ensure that the provenance of the model is secure. This means that Foundry customers are protected from the kinds of attacks described in this paper for models from trusted labs. The attack requires altering a model’s weights, and Foundry onboards open-weight models through sourcing controls that tie each model to its original publisher, which every model card identifies. Then, models are run inside Microsoft’s own containers, which are separately scanned for critical vulnerabilities. These controls cover where a model came from and the software around it.

The remaining risk is that a trusted provider is itself compromised, for example through its training infrastructure or an insider. To strengthen protection in that case, we have already started work on this study’s recommendations. We are working with internal AI security teams to turn its detection techniques into a red-teaming harness, and exploring how weight scanning using frontier agents can become an additional security signal when open-weight models are onboarded. Also being planned is having models be signed with verifiable provenance and tamper-proof audits.

Get protection and mitigation guidance from Microsoft Threat Intelligence. (opens in new tab) 

Here is what we suggest as a starting point:

(This is not exhaustive; no audit can guarantee safe behavior. These should be one layer of a defense-in-depth approach.)

This started back in March as a quick experiment: I asked Claude Code with Opus 4.5 to backdoor a model by hardwiring a few activations without training. And it did. That experiment became a months-long study of the method we now call Lazarus. Here is what we learned:

• Agents offer a large attack surface. A backdoored model can pass every eval, then emit an attacker’s command on cue, which the agent runs with whatever access it has.
• Dormant neurons can be turned into trigger detectors. Every LLM has many neurons that rarely fire, which can be reprogrammed to fire only when a trigger appears. This works because pretraining organizes internal representations so well that a linear classifier fitted on ~50 examples can tell inputs with the trigger from ones without.
• One reprogrammed neuron can inject one token. Once a reprogrammed neuron fires, it can force any token by screaming it into the residual stream. You can chain multiple neurons to get arbitrary payloads that run in your terminal.
• It needs inference only compute. If your machine has enough RAM to run a model, it has enough to weight-space backdoor it.
• This is not a case against open weights. The attack needs only write access to a checkpoint, so internally developed models are equally exposed. A compromised account, pipeline, or storage can be sufficient. What matters is weight integrity and provenance.
• Weights should be audited like code. Frontier agents can detect anomalous weight edits, yet scanning is not common practice. That should change.
• [!!!] Claude Code with Opus 4.5 discovered most of this autonomously

This is a simplified depiction of how Lazarus works.

Read the full post here

Opens in a new tab

The post Lazare, veni foras: Reprogramming Dormant Neurons to Backdoor AI Agents appeared first on Microsoft Research.

SAVE $99.01: The new Apple Watch Ultra 4 (GPS + Cellular, 49mm) is on sale for the record-low price of $699.99 at Amazon and Costco as of Nov. 10. That's 12% off its standard sticker price of $799.

Opens in a new window Credit: Apple Apple Watch Ultra 4 (GPS + Cellular, 49mm) $699.99 at Amazon
$799 Save $99.01   Get Deal at Amazon Opens in a new window Credit: Apple Apple Watch Ultra 4 (GPS + Cellular, 49mm) $699.99 at Costco
$799 Save $99.01 Not restricted to Costco members. Get Deal at Costco

The opening days of the holiday season have brought us a $99 discount on Apple's latest premium smartwatch — its biggest markdown since launching in September, and a likely preview of its Black Friday deal.

As of this writing, Amazon and Costco both have the new Apple Watch Ultra 4 on sale for just $699.99, or 12% off its $799 MSRP. It's never been cheaper before, according to the price-tracking site camelcamelcamel. (Costco's deal isn't a member exclusive, FYI.)

Both retailers' deals apply to Ultra 4 models with a Natural titanium case. You can choose from three different band styles: Desert Alpine Loop, Sand Trail Loop, or Translucent Gray Ocean Band.

The Ultra 4 is Apple's fanciest, longest-lasting, and most rugged wearable. While it looks the same as its predecessor, the Apple Watch Ultra 3, it has better optical and electrical sensors that can take more accurate and consistent heart rate readings. It also boasts a faster processor that supports a couple of new features, like a Readiness score and Siri Recap conversation summaries.

In his 4.5/5 review of the Ultra 4, Mashable's Stan Schroeder called it "an essential upgrade" for athletes.

Will the Apple Watch Ultra 4 get cheaper before Black Friday?

We don't expect the Ultra 4 to get any cheaper on or around Black Friday. For the past two years, the latest Apple Watch Ultra model has been on sale for $699 over the holidays.

If you're like me, you're always looking for a reason to justify buying a few more power tools. Or, more importantly, additional battery packs for your collection. If so, I have good news. While it's not quite the holiday season yet, that hasn't stopped The Home Depot from launching a slew of discounts or free battery and tool deals that are too good to pass up.

When it comes to gifting, kids can be particular. The things kids like change not just with age, but also with evolving trends from TV shows and new technology. If parents are lucky enough, their kid will write a long list of the precise items they'd like as a birthday or Christmas or Hannukkah gift and put it up on the fridge with pride. But sometimes, it can be as much of a crapshoot as coming up with a gift idea for someone else's kid. Without further ado, here are the best gifts for kids of all ages — including toy and non-toy gifts alike.

On Tuesday, Rockstar Games gave us some details about how Grand Theft Auto VI will look and run on current-gen consoles. But there was a fascinating buried lede in that blog post.

Specifically, it will actually be possible to play GTA 6 on a last-generation Xbox One console at launch. There is, obviously, a huge catch to that: You'll only be able to play it that way by streaming the game over the cloud. The actual news here is that GTA 6 will be playable through Xbox Cloud Gaming, a feature available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers, starting at 1 a.m. ET on Nov. 19, the day the game comes out.

SEE ALSO: 'GTA 6' on PS5 vs. Xbox: What we know This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Using Xbox Cloud Gaming, you'll be able to stream GTA 6 to an Xbox Series console or an Xbox One. I'm not entirely sure why you'd stream it to one of the newer consoles instead of just running it natively, but the option is there, nonetheless. If you play GTA 6 this way, the stream will use the Xbox Series S version's graphics settings.

Of course, there is one final very relevant detail here: Starting this month, Xbox has imposed strict hourly limits on cloud gaming. You can only stream games for five to 15 hours per month, depending on which version of Game Pass you pay for. There's also the matter of game streaming being subject to the whims of internet quality, so things like buffering, latency, and poor visual quality can be part of the experience.

So, it might still be worth it to just try and find a current-gen console instead.

Want more tech and digital culture news delivered to your inbox daily or sent straight to your device? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.

Before smartphones became ubiquitous, the whole idea of a phone was to have a small communication and entertainment device that could comfortably slide into your pants pocket, jacket, or purse.

If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.

There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it'll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.

An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.

Want more tech and digital culture news delivered to your inbox daily or sent straight to your device? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.

If you find yourself stuck at any step of today's Hurdle, don't worry! We have you covered.

SEE ALSO: Hurdle: Everything you need to know to find the answers Hurdle Word 1 hint

Scrooge.

Hurdle Word 1 answer

GRUMP

Hurdle Word 2 hint

Choppy.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for November 10, 2026 Hurdle Word 2 Answer

JERKY

Hurdle Word 3 hint

Gripped.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Meanings for each word for Nov. 10, 2026 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Meanings for each word for Nov. 10, 2026 Hurdle Word 3 answer

CLUNG

Hurdle Word 4 hint

Chocolate.

Hurdle Word 4 answer

BROWN

Final Hurdle hint

Refuge.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Games available on Mashable Hurdle Word 5 answer

HAVEN

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Sometimes the most-watched part of a two-hour podcast is the 30 seconds someone else pulled out of it. That's good publicity for the show, but if the clip takes off on another account, who gets paid?

X's new clipping tool lets both the person who posts the clip and the creator who made the original video earn from it, as long as they’re enrolled in the platform's Original Content Rewards program. Every clip also links back to the exact moment in the original video, so anyone who wants to hear what happened next can keep watching.

"Everyone wins when great moments travel. Clipping is one more step toward making X the best place to create, grow and earn," the @XCreators account posted on the platform.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Using this new feature, making a clip works a lot like reposting. Tap the repost icon, choose "Clip video," and trim the moment you want to share. You can add your own commentary, and anyone who taps the "Clip from" label can pick up the original video right where the clip begins.

The tool is live on iOS and Android, with web access on the way. For now, it works on prerecorded videos at least two minutes long, and clips can run from five to 60 seconds, or up to 30 percent of the original.

What does a good clip actually pay?

People were getting paid to find those 30-second clips before X put a button on it.

Podcasters, streamers, and marketers recruit clippers through Discord servers and marketplaces like Whop, where they pay people to cut up footage and post it on their own accounts. Marketers told Business Insider earlier this year that campaigns typically pay $1 to $4 per 1,000 views. One Whop listing offered $1.75 per 1,000 views for clips of Sofia Franklyn's Nov. 10 appearance on Aspire With Emma Grede. That’s $175 before fees for 100,000 qualifying views (assuming the clip meets the campaign’s terms).

People online are equally as excited as creators.

"this is HUGE for creators and their payouts," said X creator @0xhades. "amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! prayers answeredddddd" said another user. "Whoa this is crazy useful. Nice," wrote a third.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

As X introduces an easier way to clip, YouTube is moving in the opposite direction. As Mashable reported in October, YouTube is changing what it recommends in the Shorts feed to give less reach to reposts that add little to the original. YouTube wants clippers to bring something of their own, whether that's commentary, creative editing, or a story built around the footage in order to "improve the Shorts experience for everyone."

SEE ALSO: YouTube Shorts is cracking down on clipping. Here’s what that means for creators.

For now, X's clipping rules don’t list a flat rate. And if creators would rather keep their videos from being clipped in the first place, they'll have to wait for the opt-out X says it’s working on.

If X clipping catches on, the next thing to watch is whether podcasters start uploading full episodes to X just to see which moments fans pull out of them.

From YouTubers and TikTok stars to streamers and podcasters, Mashable talks to creators about how they built their platforms, the gear they swear by, and the trends they see coming next. Read more of our creator coverage, sign up for our Trending Now and Top Stories newsletters or get Mashable push alerts to discover the internet's most exciting voices. 

Durable watches that can take a beating don't need to be pricey, and you can find options like Timex's legendary Expedition Scout for under $50 with a limited-time Amazon deal. It's the quintessential field watch, blending style and simplicity to take on your outdoor adventures.

Kai Cenat has one more game to beat before he can call his Grand Theft Auto marathon done. The streamer, with 22 million followers on Twitch, cleared GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, and GTA IV in under 100 hours. And on Monday night, Nov. 6, he told fans on X he’d made it to the fifth and final game on his list. "PLAYING GTA 5 NOW GET IN HERE," he posted on X.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Cenat kicked off the marathon Nov. 5 with a plan to beat all five games on stream. Along the way, the games started spilling into real life. In a video posted to his YouTube channel with over 500,000 views, Cenat dressed as GTA IV protagonist Niko Bellic and took a performer dressed as Big Smoke to a McDonald's drive-thru, where Big Smoke tried to place his famously huge San Andreas order.

Now that Cenat is back in Los Santos, some viewers were hyped. "Let's gooo," said one user, while another viewer joked that he was "warming up like it's a preseason game" ahead of GTA 6, which launches Nov. 19 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

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For GTA 6, though, Cenat is planning to take his time. As Mashable previously reported, he wants to spend time exploring between story missions and encouraged fans to make time for their own playthroughs, too. As for when he’ll log off, he’s leaving that open. "I ain’t coming off stream until I feel like it’s the right time," he wrote.

GTA 6 launches Nov. 19 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, bringing the series back to Vice City. Until then, there’s still one stop left on Cenat’s tour. The marathon is streaming on Twitch.

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The Raspberry Pi is great for DIY projects, but it has a few limitations that become obvious once you start connecting sensors, motors, and other electronics. The ESP32 has its own limitations, especially when you want to run more demanding software. If you have been using either board for a while, you have probably run into situations where you wished it could do something the other handles easily.

We live in an increasingly disposable world where people upgrade their perfectly functional phones every year or are forced to replace products because they're no longer supported. It's not always the case; my surround system is still going strong after more than 15 years, which isn't something that can always be said of soundbars.

Ultralight mice have completely taken over the FPS scene. The CORSAIR SABRE v2 PRO weighs in at a featherweight 36 grams, putting it in the same weight class as some of the most agile wireless mice on the market. If you've been waiting for a flagship wireless mouse that balances top-tier specs with a more reasonable price, today's deal is exactly what you've been looking for.

SAVE $130.99: As of Nov. 10, the all-in-one Shark FlexFusion Air + Ceramic Styling & Drying System is on sale on Amazon for only $299 (normally $429.99). That's an unprecedented 30% savings.

Opens in a new window Credit: Shark Shark FlexFusion Air + Ceramic Styling & Drying System with Air Straightener $299 at Amazon
$429.99 Save $130.99   Get Deal at Amazon

We adore the Shark FlexStyle here at Mashable (it's our top Dyson Airwrap dupe). But if your budget has a little wiggle room, consider upgrading to Shark's more versatile FlexFusion multi-styler.

Released in 2024, the FlexFusion has the same ingenious twisting base as the FlexStyle, but it utilizes heat styling (not just air styling) and adds attachments for both wet and dry hair. It's basically a prototype of the Shark Glam with a slightly bulkier build, no idling sensor, and — as of now — a much cheaper price.

In the lead-up to its Black Friday Week sale, Amazon has an all-in-one FlexFusion bundle on sale for only $299 — a 30% discount on its usual sticker price of $429.99. That's its lowest price ever, according to data on the price-tracking site camelcamelcamel.

This bundle comes with every attachment made for the FlexFusion, including an Air Straightener, a FrizzFighter finishing tool, a Wet-or-Dry Fusion Brush, two auto-wrap curling barrels, and a styling concentrator.

Amazon has its FlexFusion offer labeled as a "limited time deal," so don't miss out.

A Vanderbilt University professor was in the middle of class on Monday, Nov. 9, when about 40 files labeled "Read Me" popped up on her screen and a spoken message started playing. That would be creepy enough on its own. But the professor's account was one glimpse of an ongoing cyberattack that prompted Vanderbilt to tell students and staff to shut down their school-issued devices and disconnect from campus WiFi.

While Vanderbilt has restored access to some of its systems, an update posted to the university's X account on Tuesday morning stated that "Vanderbilt Information Technology continues to work with government agencies and other partners to manage the situation,” promising further updates.

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Vanderbilt hasn’t said how its IT team first spotted the attack, but there are clues, namely an alleged ransom note on a Vanderbilt computer published by BleepingComputer.

"If you could not tell already, your databases are locked," a ransomware group calling itself BYOD wrote in a post claiming responsibility for the Vanderbilt cyberattack. "We have your entire estate and research data," the group added, claiming it had stolen more than 1 million Social Security numbers along with student and employee records. In a separate ransom note obtained by BleepingComputer, the group threatened to release the data unless Vanderbilt negotiated.

Whether BYOD actually has that data is still an open question. A Vanderbilt spokesperson told The Washington Post that the university hadn't verified the group's claims.

Just two weeks before the Vanderbilt attack, on Oct. 26, employees at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center heard a similar message.

Several UNM Health employees told the Associated Press that a voice played over their work computers, claiming that student, employee, and patient information had been stolen. BYOD also claimed responsibility for that attack. As UNM Health responded, it diverted ambulances to other hospitals and temporarily suspended outpatient surgeries and appointments. (UNM later said its investigation found that the attack affected some staff and student devices but didn't reach its core systems or servers.)

SEE ALSO: $6 billion Binance hack started with a fake job interview

Vanderbilt's WiFi was back by Monday evening, but getting online didn't mean students could get to everything they needed. By Monday night, Vanderbilt's IT team had cleared Brightspace, where students access course materials, and the YES student portal for use, but File storage services OneDrive and Box were still affected. Vanderbilt said classes and student services would follow their usual Tuesday schedule and told students who were having trouble finishing assignments to ask their instructors about extensions.

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The disruption went beyond coursework. One person told the Nashville Scene they'd lost access to research stored on Vanderbilt's systems and were relying on personal backups.

The next question is whether Vanderbilt can determine whose information was exposed, if anyone's.

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I love a good FOSS tool. LibreOffice has long been one of my go-to suites for work, both personal and professional. Used in conjunction with my other favorite productivity tool, Obsidian, I find that I can get a lot done. The spreadsheet (Calc) is superior to Excel for my needs. I love the word processor (Writer), and I still use my old desktop publishing tools for major work, but I've converted to LibreOffice Draw for quick projects. But it does have some occasional hiccups, like paragraph justification in LibreOffice Writer. I've certainly noticed it in the past, but learned that a recent update to LibreOffice fixed this text problem. It's noticeably different and very easy to use.

It’s no secret that the iPhone Duo launch has been plagued with issues. However, a nasty screen defect is far from the only reason why people are unhappy with Apple’s first foldable phone. The complaints go beyond the surface.