Tech News Roundup: Hacking, Economic Theories, and Software Updates
A range of stories emerged this week, spanning cybersecurity breaches, economic forecasts, and software updates.
Notepad++ developer Don Ho confirmed that the software's update mechanism was hijacked by hackers believed to be associated with the Chinese government between June and December 2025, according to a blog post published Monday. The cyberattack delivered malicious updates to users, with security experts citing malware payloads and attack patterns as evidence of the Chinese government's involvement. Ho did not disclose the number of users targeted or compromised. Notepad++ is a long-standing open-source project.
In economic news, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis argued that capitalism has ended and the world has entered an era of "techno-feudalism." Speaking to Euronews after his panel at Web Summit Qatar, Varoufakis stated that big tech companies wield unprecedented power over human behavior. He warned that the world could be heading toward another crisis like 2008, driven by the rise of stablecoins and powerful tech platforms.
Firaxis Games announced an update to Civilization VII, called "Test of Time," planned for release this spring. The update aims to address criticisms that the game "didn't feel like a Civilization game." Ed Beach, the Civilization franchise's creative director, and Dennis Shirk, its executive producer, spoke with Ars Technica about the changes being made, including rethinking unpopular mechanics from the original release. Civilization VII launched just shy of one year ago.
Emails published by the Justice Department revealed that former Windows boss Steven Sinofsky sought advice from Jeffrey Epstein during his negotiations to exit Microsoft in November 2012. According to The Verge, Sinofsky forwarded emails to Epstein as he negotiated a $14 million payout from Microsoft.
In the realm of artificial intelligence, VentureBeat reported that enterprises are increasingly adopting Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to ground Large Language Models (LLMs) in proprietary data. However, many organizations are finding that retrieval has become a foundational system dependency, rather than a feature. Varun Raj wrote that failures in retrieval can undermine trust, compliance, and operational reliability. The article reframes retrieval as infrastructure rather than application logic.
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