From its opening minutes, Moves of the Diamond Hand is upfront about what it offers: You’re going to have a lot of strange conversations, and you’re going to roll a lot of dice. Get on board with this proposition, and the reward is one of the most creative roleplaying games I’ve seen in years, even if its many mysteries won’t be resolved until 2027.
Technology
Another Starlink satellite has inexplicably exploded
SpaceX says it lost contact with a Starlink satellite after suffering an “anomaly.” SpaceX isn’t saying exactly what happened, but space-tracking company Leo Labs says it “immediately detected tens of objects in the vicinity” of Starlink 34343 after the event.
“Latest analysis shows the event poses no new risk to the @Space_Station, its crew, or to the upcoming launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission,” says SpaceX in a message posted to X. “We will continue to monitor the satellite along with any trackable debris and coordinate with @NASA and the @USSpaceForce.”
The satellite and fragments are expected to burn up in the atmosphere within a few weeks. SpaceX says it is working to determine the root cause.
The latest mishap occurred at about 560km above the Earth, an increasingly crowded area known as low Earth orbit where over 24,000 objects, including debris and about 10,000 Starlink satellites, are currently being tracked.
In January, SpaceX requested approval from the FCC for “up to one million satellites” to create orbital data centers. “We just recently gave a request for FCC licensing of up to a million AI satellites,” said SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell in a recent Time profile. “I’m surprised that didn’t get more news. I thought for sure that would get a lot of news.”
Atlantic reporter Alex Reisner recently uncovered four datasets of music being used to train AI models and made them fully searchable for the public. Two of the sets are absolutely enormous at 12 million and 9 million tracks. The other two are much smaller, but still represent a significant amount of training data at over 100,000 songs each.
According to Reisner, the sets have been downloaded thousands of times and, while it’s impossible to know exactly who has used them, Google and Stability have both confirmed they have in research papers. Some of the sources, like the Free Music Archive dataset, are free to stream for personal use but require licensing for commercial applications.
While the datasets are freely available on the internet in theory, using them as training data is not as simple as downloading a ZIP file and feeding it to an AI model. As Reisner explains:
Three of the datasets I found are distributed as a list of links to songs on YouTube or Spotify. AI developers download the actual audio using tools that automate the job, some of which allow developers to bypass logins, advertisements, and mechanisms that might earn money or subscribers for creators. Such tools violate the terms of service of these platforms.
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You step off a long flight, find your hotel and the first thing you look for is the Wi-Fi password. You connect, clear your inbox, log into your streaming account to unwind and maybe check your bank balance before dinner. It all feels harmless because we all do it.
But that one travel habit can quietly put your passwords, accounts and personal information at risk.
Public Wi-Fi is convenient for you. It can also be convenient for the person sitting three tables over with a laptop and bad intentions.
THE TEMPTATIONS AND RISKS OF FREE WI-FI
A traveler connects to hotel Wi-Fi, a common habit that can put personal accounts at risk when the network is not protected. (iStock)
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Why public Wi-Fi is such a soft target
Most public networks send your data through the air on a network you do not control. When a network is open, anyone connected to it may be able to use simple tools to watch traffic patterns, spot unencrypted activity or try to redirect you to fake login pages. Security researchers call this packet sniffing. Modern HTTPS protects most usernames and passwords, but not every app, site or connection handles security perfectly. That is where public Wi-Fi can still get risky fast.
Then there are the fake networks. A hacker sets up a hotspot named something friendly like “Airport_Free_Wi-Fi” or “Hotel Guest,” and travelers connect without a second thought. Once you’re on their network, everything you do passes through their hands first. This trick is common enough that it has a name: the evil twin attack.
APPLE FIXES PASSWORDS APP VULNERABILITY ENABLING WI-FI ATTACKS
Here’s the part most people miss. Stealing your password is not the only goal. When you log into a service, your device gets a small file called a session token that keeps you signed in. If an attacker can trick you onto a fake network, push you toward a fake login page or exploit a poorly protected connection, that token or login can become a target. That is how a quick hotel Wi-Fi session can turn into someone hijacking an account, locking you out, racking up charges or selling your access on the side.
Your phone, your laptop, your email, your banking app, your streaming logins. On an unprotected network, all of it is fair game.
The simple fix: encrypt everything you send
The good news is that protecting yourself does not require you to become a security expert or swear off public Wi-Fi forever. You just need a Virtual Private Network, or VPN.
ROUTER VPNS VS DEVICE VPNS: WHICH PRIVACY SOLUTION IS BEST FOR YOU?
A VPN builds an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. Everything you send and receive gets scrambled before it leaves your phone or laptop, so even if someone is watching the network, all they see is meaningless noise. Your passwords, your messages, your account logins and your banking details stay locked up tight.
The catch with a lot of VPNs is that people either forget to turn them on or find them clunky enough to give up. The best VPN for travel should be easy to use, fast enough for streaming and video calls, strong on privacy and able to protect your devices with one tap.
My No. 1 pick checks those boxes without making you think about it. It uses strong encryption, has a no-logs policy, includes a kill switch if the VPN connection drops and runs on iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac and routers.
MALICIOUS APPS POSING AS VPNS CAN TURN YOUR DEVICE INTO A TOOL FOR CYBERATTACKS
For the best VPN software, see my expert review of the best VPNs for browsing the web privately on your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices at Cyberguy.com
Fake public Wi-Fi networks can look harmless, but they may route your activity through a hacker’s device before it reaches the internet. (iStock)
A few smart habits to pair with it
A VPN does the bulk of the work, but these quick moves close the remaining gaps.
1) Turn off auto-connect
Stop your phone from automatically joining Wi-Fi networks you do not fully trust.
5 PHONE SETTINGS TO CHANGE RIGHT NOW FOR A SAFER SMARTPHONE
On iPhone, go to Settings > Wi-Fi > Ask to Join Networks and choose Ask or Notify. You can also tap the info icon next to a saved network and turn off Auto-Join.
On Samsung, go to Settings > Connections > Wi-Fi, tap the gear icon next to a saved network and turn off Auto reconnect.
2) Confirm the network name before you connect
Before joining a hotel, airport or café Wi-Fi, ask the staff for the exact network name. Fake “free Wi-Fi” networks often use names that look official enough to fool tired travelers.
3) Turn on two-factor authentication
Even if a password leaks, 2FA gives an attacker another wall to get past before they can break into your account.
4) Use a password manager
Better still, use a password manager to create and store super-secure credentials that are unique for every site.
5) Save the sensitive stuff for trusted connections
When you can, handle banking, shopping and other sensitive logins on cellular data, your phone’s hotspot, your home network or a trusted VPN.
Kurt’s key takeaways
The trip is supposed to be the memorable part, not the security headache you deal with after you get home. The travel mistake is treating free Wi-Fi as safe Wi-Fi. Free Wi-Fi can be risky, and the people who exploit it are counting on you not to notice. Flip the script with a trusted VPN, build the one-tap habit, and you close one of the easiest doors hackers use against travelers.
Do you turn on a VPN the moment you connect to public Wi-Fi, or only when you remember? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com
Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report
Using a trusted VPN while traveling helps encrypt your connection and protect your phone, laptop and streaming accounts on public networks. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
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Moves of the Diamond Hand is an Early Access videogame available on PC, macOS, and steamOS (including the Steam Deck, where I played it) from musician and game designer Cosmo D. The game looks and feels like a 2000s-era first-person RPG or immersive sim: environments are grimy, stark, and blocky; characters’ features are stretched over smooth heads a bit too small for their faces; an eerie soundtrack pulses over all. You’ll arrive on a train and immediately meet an old mentor, disgraced by some kind of political scandal. You convey your desire to join a powerful organization called Circus X, then declare which of several wildly different paths you’ll take into its fold — you can try joining the city council, but could find equal success crafting the perfect sandwich or joining the best band.
These options help introduce the central mechanic. The game gives you one upgradeable die for each of seven stats, ranging from standard fare like Physique and Observation to the more idiosyncratic Cooking and Music. To set a challenge, it will roll a die corresponding to one of those attributes, and you’ve got to match or beat it with your own roll.
Once you emerge into the train station, the complexity quickly multiplies. There are a plethora of sub-mechanics including cooking, performing music, laundering disguises, and mixing cocktails — all of which add additional dice with unique quirks. You can selectively re-roll dice in a manner similar to Yahtzee, introducing an element of strategy within each encounter, and your final score (win or lose) is translated into experience points. The basic system was introduced in Cosmo D’s last game, Betrayal at Club Low, but in a less flexible and elegant form; Diamond Hand feels like its evolution. (Disclosure: My husband has provided outside feedback for Cosmo D’s games.)
It’s all a little intimidating at first. But the game allows you to ease into its options, which happens quickly, since you’re rolling for virtually every action and verbal exchange from making small talk to opening a door. There’s a meaningful element of chance to all this, without descending into unbounded randomness. Some rolls can be mathematically impossible to win or lose at a given skill level, but it’s possible to still damage your health or gain an unwelcome status effect with safe challenges, preventing them from becoming purely rote. You can retry most actions if you fail them, but they’ll become slightly more difficult on a second attempt, so there’s a constant balancing act of deciding when to take the initial leap. The ambient low-level risk makes even simple spaces feel substantive and engaging — it negates the common RPG urge to speed through environmental detail and flavor text while looking for the “real” parts of the game.
Through countless skill checks, you’ll internalize the odd logic of the game’s world. The setting, Off-Peak City, is a garish metropolis shaped by the machinations of sinister corporations, corrupt politicians, and shady operatives, but also musicians, restaurateurs, and literally and figuratively underground tailors — a neon retro-future for streetwise aesthetes. What might be niche skills in any other game prove extraordinarily powerful here. The Music stat, whose uses include sewing (machines can, among other options, be literally operated by improvisation), calming aggressive animal-human hybrids (by whistling tunes), and mixology (which can be performed “rhythmically”), is arguably the single strongest power in the game.
Circus X, you’ll soon learn, is a secretive arts institution that influences everything from politics to the sandwich supply chain — imagine the Factory crossed with the Freemasons. While pursuing membership, you’re embroiled in a local election between a scandal-plagued technocrat, a former boy-band star, and the corporate-controlled clone of a mayor from decades past. In place of a Maltese Falcon, everyone’s scheming for control of a sentient Big Mouth Billy Bass. And meddling behind the scenes is the mysterious, anarchic Diamond Hand, frequently alluded to but not explained.
Diamond Hand’s story evokes real-world parallels, but as a jumping-off point for something that’s rich and alive in its own right. In perhaps the most obvious example, a company in Off-Peak City is pumping the place full of clones, supplanting human artists with corporate-guardrailed regurgitations of old media. But rather than stop at commentary, the game walks this out to explore the idea that clones are also conscious beings who are frustrated by their creative limits and lack of autonomy, while letting human characters reflect on their own relationship with nostalgia and artistic taste.
Put this all together and you’ve got a hard-boiled sci-fi thriller involving subway busking, finding library books, stumping for politicians, harvesting lettuce, arguing about jazz, and doing laundry, infused with the lizard-brain appeal of a nonstop game of chance. It’s irresistible.
Most of Diamond Hand’s main quests end in roadblocks, because its Early Access build includes only the first two of six chapters, with the next scheduled for this summer and a full launch set for the spring of 2027. But even in its current state, Diamond Hand is dense and tantalizing, delivering a string of absurd premises and dry humor with a straight face. (Among many tossed-off jokes that are also actual game mechanics, local pizza-makers require everyone to bake their own pie, so if you don’t like your order, you have only yourself to blame.) You’re granted experience points for letting characters ramble through their backstories and opinions — which lands somewhere between a sly gag about RPG infodumping and a straightforwardly clever decision — but the dialogue pays off even without that prize.
And for all its dystopian elements, there’s something idealistic about a world where art, for good or ill, deeply matters. Diamond Hand may be a work in progress, but it’s a recipe for becoming obsessed with skill and perfection, chasing the world’s greatest sandwich and the string of lucky dice rolls that will get you there.
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