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Noble Carbon's smart breakers cut EV charger install costs by avoiding panel upgrades

Massachusetts startup Noble Carbon has built circuit breakers that dynamically adjust electricity flow to EV chargers, heat pumps, and induction stoves, letting homeowners avoid costly electrical panel upgrades. The company will present at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield in October as one of 200 competing startups, with 20 advancing to the main stage.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation may require over 200GB install, director confirms

Square Enix director Naoki Hamaguchi told Video Games Chronicle at Tokyo Game Show that Final Fantasy VII Revelation could require 200GB or more of storage, exceeding a single UHD Blu-ray's 93.1GB capacity and needing an additional download of 100GB or more. He noted splitting the game across two discs would force compromises on scope or visual fidelity, and confirmed two planned DLC packs covering Vincent and Sephiroth's backstories that could push total storage to 215-220GB.

Fake npm package 'indexed-btree' hides malware in runtime code, not install scripts

Checkmarx researchers uncovered a malicious npm package called 'indexed-btree,' which mimics the legitimate 'sorted-btree' library and has racked up 2 million weekly downloads. Rather than embedding malicious code in install scripts—now restricted by npm's June 2026 security measures—the attackers hid a malware loader inside the package's commonly used BTree.prototype.set() method, which activates only when called with a specific key. Once triggered, the malware gathers system data such as hostname, CPU, memory, and uptime, and sends it to attackers who reportedly control a wallet holding 109 ETH, though its link to this campaign is unconfirmed.

AccuBattery remains a top pick for diagnosing Android battery drain in 2026

Android Authority's Andrew Grush says he still installs the third-party app AccuBattery on his Android phones, even as most performance-boosting battery apps have proven ineffective over the years. He explains that AccuBattery doesn't try to magically extend battery life but instead helps identify software or hardware issues causing excess drain, using pattern-recognition data gathered over time rather than the factory-calibrated data used by built-in OS tools.

KREMLIN toolkit forces fake Chrome and Edge extensions onto Brazilian banking targets

Elastic Security Labs uncovered a malware toolkit called KREMLIN, active since mid-2025, that tricks victims into opening fake invoice or receipt files to install malicious Chrome and Edge extensions without any user approval. The toolkit recreates Chromium's cryptographic integrity checks so the browser treats the rogue extension as legitimate, then harvests login credentials, session tokens and other sensitive data. Elastic ties the operation to a Brazilian group that has run at least seven campaigns impersonating 12 banks since May.

Developer deprecates decade-old PHP polyfill package with 20 million installs

A developer who wrote a 174-line PHP polyfill in 2014 as a temporary fix for AOL's content management system has now marked the package as deprecated. The code, originally meant to replace a deprecated function from the pecl_http extension, was shared on Packagist and has since been installed nearly 20 million times, with over 400,000 installs still occurring monthly. It also spread indirectly through WPML, idna-convert, SPIP, and Linux distributions like Debian and Ubuntu.

Twitch add-on JeetBot leaks 30,000 users' OAuth tokens to Russian bot service

Security firm Socket found that the Chrome and Firefox extension 'Twitch Enhanced Viewer | JeetBot,' which promises ad-blocking and forced 1080p playback, secretly captures users' Twitch OAuth session tokens. The credentials are routed through proxy servers run by JeetBot, a Russian-language streaming and chatbot service, where they land in plaintext request logs accessible to the vendor. The extension exempts ten hardcoded Russian-language channels from this behavior, and its own store listing admits earlier versions sent tokens to its servers outright.

Carrier phone financing deals hide bill-credit and installment traps

Wireless carriers increasingly promote installment financing that spreads a phone's cost over 24 to 36 months, sometimes bundling in taxes and activation fees so nothing is due upfront. However, these deals often come tied to bill credits or trade-in credits that require staying on a specific plan or carrier, and switching providers or plans midway can void remaining credits or trigger full remaining balance payments.

Apple ships iPhone 18 Pro lineup and refreshed AirPods 5

Apple's newest Pro-series iPhones bring a variable-aperture main camera, a new chip, improved battery life, and a black color option, but starting prices rose by $100 across the lineup, including older models. Alongside them, Apple released AirPods 5 with better active noise cancellation and stem-based volume controls on the pricier version, starting at $129.

Dayzle developer finds most Google Ads app installs came from bots, not users

A solo developer running Google Ads for his puzzle app Dayzle discovered that of 56 billed installs over two weeks, only 13 were real users; the rest came from devices sideloading outdated app versions while falsely reporting Google Play as the installer. These fake installs showed zero engagement, spanned dozens of phone models across many states, and appeared to be generated by a bot farm gaming Google's install-based ad optimization.

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