Tangle Tech

And so the weekend comes to a close with a Strands puzzle that might cause you a few more problems than some recent instalments. If that's the case, you might find my hints to be useful.  Want more word-based fun? Then check out my  Wordle today ,  NYT Connections today  and  Quordle today  pages for hints and answers for those games.  SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers. NYT Strands today (game #119) - hint #1 - today's theme What is the theme of today's NYT Strands? • Today's NYT Strands theme is… Cut and color NYT Strands today (game #119) - hint #2 - clue words Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system. PENT SHEET SEEM SWEET SWEEP WELT NYT Strands today (game #119) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram? • Rock stars NYT Strands today (game #119) - hint #4 - spangram position What are two sides of the ...

Blackmagic Design, best known for the excellent DaVinci Resolve - a comprehensive video editing and color grading suite used by professionals - has released the Blackmagic Camera app for Android, extending professional digital film tools to Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel users.  This free app (which frankly we’d pay for) is based on the operating system of Blackmagic’s digital film cameras,  and delivers television and film quality video production. It features user-friendly controls for frame rate, shutter angle, white balance, and ISO adjustments, alongside recording directly to Blackmagic Cloud in formats up to 8K. Advanced configuration options The app, which you can download from Google Play now, essentially transforms Android smartphones into high-end film cameras by integrating detailed camera controls within an intuitive interface. Users can modify settings with a single tap, streamlining the filming process. The new tool boasts a heads-up display showing vital...

The 4th of July sales and Amazon Prime Day coincide as two excellent opportunities to bag a mid-summer bargain. Generally speaking, both offer great deals and we always cover each at TechRadar. You may be wondering, however, what the differences are and what you should be shopping in each event. Luckily I can help. I've been covering these events as deals editor on TechRadar for four years now so I've got plenty of tips, advice, and experience to share for our readers. If you've got your 4th of July shopping list ready but are wondering whether you should simply wait until Prime Day (or even Black Friday), then I'll tell you exactly what to expect in each sale.  While you're here, I highly recommend bookmarking our 4th of July sales and Amazon Prime Day hub pages, which we'll be using to roundup all the best deals in each event. If you're looking for expert-picked deals, these pages should be your first port of call over the next month.  The key differ...

I really enjoyed today's Strands puzzle and hope you will do too. Maybe that's because I found it to be quite easy – but don't worry if you struggle a little, because I've got some hints for you below. Want more word-based fun? Then check out my  Wordle today ,  NYT Connections today  and  Quordle today  pages for hints and answers for those games.  SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers. NYT Strands today (game #118) - hint #1 - today's theme What is the theme of today's NYT Strands? • Today's NYT Strands theme is… It's way over your head NYT Strands today (game #118) - hint #2 - clue words Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system. LETTER ELITE SPOON NOTE PLAN PLAY NYT Strands today (game #118) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram? • Heavens above NYT Strands today (game #118) - hint #4 - spangram...

Google Translate is adding 110 new languages to its library, the largest expansion ever made to the platform. The update leverages Google's PaLM 2 large language model, an artificial intelligence tool that helps accurately translate across a wider array of languages than before. Those languages are spoken by approximately 614 million people, or about 8% of the global population.  The list includes some widely spoken tongues, dialects, and languages that are native to smaller communities. Notably, African languages saw their biggest expansion, with Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda, and Wolof joining the list. On the other end of the spectrum, Cantonese is likely one of the most widely spoken languages on the new list, as is Punjabi (Shahmukhi), the most spoken language in Pakistan.  There's also the Sicilian version of Italian, Manx, a Celtic language spoken on the Isle of Man that nearly went extinct, and a Papua New Guinea creole called Tok Pisin. PaLM 2 Talk For lang...

Cybersecurity researchers from Outpost24’s KrakenLabs observed a new and quite unique malware campaign that seems to values quantity over quality. Usually, when hackers compromise a device, they deploy a single piece of malware and try their best to remain unseen and persistent, as they use the computer for whatever end goal they have. But this new campaign, dubbed Unfurling Hemlock, does the exact opposite, making it stand out in the world of cybercrime. The researchers are saying that once the victim triggers the malware executable - in this case called ‘EXTRACT.EXE’ - they receive a handful of different malware, infostealers, and botnet executables. Malware cluster bomb The chances of the malware being picked up by cybersecurity solutions is high, but the researchers believe the attackers are hoping at least some of the payloads will survive the purge. Among the things dropped on the devices are Redline (popular infostealer), RisePro (an upcoming infostealer), Mystic Stealer (...

Character.AI's collection of virtual personalities based on real and fictional sources will speak up thanks to the new Character Calls audio feature. The artificial intelligence-fueled chatbots can now engage in two-way voice conversations for free on the startup's app. Augmenting the synthetic people hosted on Character.AI's hub with voices is supposed to make them more fun to talk to, according to the company. Users can tap a button in the window of their chat and start talking to the bot in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, or Chinese. Tapping while the bot is talking will interrupt it and you can switch back to texting the same way.  Character counts The Character Calls is an extension of the Character Voices feature launched in March, which only allowed audio responses from the AI chatbots, not human voice interaction. Character.ai says there are now more than a million voice options available. For those who'd like to make their own Chara...

Identity verification company AU10TIX kept a set of admin credentials exposed for more than a year, possibly allowing threat actors to steal its customers’ sensitive data. AU10TIX verifies user identities on behalf of its clients, which include, among others, TikTok, X, and Uber, via selfie pictures and scans of people’s driver’s licenses.  Cybersecurity researchers from spiderSilk were the first (among white hat researchers) to stumble upon the credentials. They claim that the login information grants access to a logging platform, where access to the identity documents is unabated.  Stolen credentials “My personal reading of this situation is that an ID Verification service provider was entrusted with people's identities and it failed to implement simple measures to protect people's identities and sensitive ID documents,” said Mossab Hussein, the chief security officer at spiderSilk.  Unfortunately, it seems that malicious players beat spiderSilk to the punch, as a...

Samsung may have accidentally revealed that it is developing a RISC-V CPU/accelerator.  The slip happened during a session titled “Unlocking the Next 35 Years of Software for HPC and AI” at the recent ISC conference, where a slide talking about the UXL Foundation (Unified Acceleration Foundation), mentioned a "RISC-V CPU/AI accelerator from Samsung."  This has sparked speculations about the South Korean tech giant’s plans to integrate RISC-V architecture in its upcoming technologies, specifically in its Mach-1 AI accelerator chip which is expected to arrive early in 2025. Not actually the first mention Samsung is a steering member of the UXL Foundation, as is Arm, Qualcomm, Intel and Google Cloud. UXL develops software aimed at enhancing AI accelerators that do not use Nvidia’s GPUs – an alternative to Nvidia's CUDA in other words. The Mach-1 is reportedly a 'lightweight' AI chip, utilizing low-power (LP) memory instead of the costly HBM typically used in A...

InspireSemi has announced the successful tapeout of the Thunderbird I Accelerated Computing chip for fabrication at TSMC.  This highly differentiated "supercomputer cluster-on-a-chip" features 1,536 custom 64-bit RISC-V CPU cores, tailored for high-level scientific computing and complex data processing. Thunderbird I is designed to cater to a wide array of compute-intensive applications, from AI and machine learning to graph analytics. Leveraging the open standard RISC-V CPU ISA, it allows easier development and integration into existing technology frameworks, with access to a solid ecosystem of software, libraries, and tools. PCIe add-in card planned The chip's architecture integrates a high-speed mesh network fabric that provides substantial bandwidth and minimal latency communication among cores, important for applications that rely on synchronized operations across multiple threads. This efficient network integration manages interactions within the chip's cor...

Medusa, an Android banking trojan that had been laying low for roughly a year now, has made a fresh appearance, experts have warned A new, lightweight Medusa variant has been seen being used by multiple threat actors, and targeting victims in numerous countries around the world, noted cybersecurity researchers from Cleafy. In their report, the researchers said they recently observed a surge in installations of a new app called “4K Sports”. Subsequent investigation determined the app to be an evolution of Medusa, with significant changes in its command infrastructure and capabilities. Expanding targets Most notably, the new variant requests fewer permissions, making it less detectable. It still asks for Accessibility Services, which should always be a red flag. Other notable mentions include Broadcasting SMS, Internet Foreground Service, and Package Management. In total, 17 commands were nixed, and five new ones introduced, including setting a black screen overlay, taking screens...

It seems like every day, there is a new macOS Sequoia feature to look forward to, or some kind of improvement in Apple’s incoming OS, with a freshly spotted one opening up the doors to improved accessibility on the audio front. MacRumors has been busy playing with the macOS 15 developer beta and discovered this new functionality in System Settings. Under Headphone Accommodations (in Accessibility > Audio), you can tweak the sound for your AirPods and some Beats headphones.  The settings therein let you amplify softer sounds - to make them more easily heard - and change the audio output frequencies to make your music, phone calls, and more clearer sounding (or at least that’s the idea). From what we can tell, the new settings you run with will carry over when using your AirPods on devices other than your Mac.  This could be a really useful feature for those who are hard of hearing to some degree, and it’s an ability that has been on iOS devices for some time. So, while...

Well, surprise, surprise. Google seemingly has more to tell us after an hours-long I/O opening keynote and maybe wants to beat out Apple, which typically hosts a September Special Event to show off new hardware, as the technology giant just sent out invites for a “Made by Google” event. When? Well, it’s not announcing an October event ultra-early but instead has a few things to show us on August 13, 2024, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST. (Image credit: Future/Jacob Krol) The invite promises an event showcasing “the best of Google AI, Android software, and the Pixel portfolio of devices.” That’s widespread, but it could mean a sizeable Pixel feature drop, some new AI tricks to combat Apple Intelligence or ChatGPT , and new hardware. Google typically releases new Pixel hardware in October. In 2023, the company unveiled the Pixel 8 , Pixel 8 Pro , and Pixel Watch 2 . Most recently, Google announced the mid-range Pixel 8a , which was decidedly separate from I/O 2024. As for w...

A botnet, strikingly similar to the dreaded Mirai, is targeting Zyxel NAS instances that have passed their end-of-life date, new research has claimed.  A report from the Shadowserver Foundation, a security organization that keeps track of cyber-threats, says the threat actors recently started scanning for one of the three flaws - CVE-2024-29973 - which is a command injection vulnerability.  The goal, apparently, is to assimilate the endpoints into a botnet.   Botnets In March 2024, cybersecurity researchers Outpost24 discovered three vulnerabilities in Zyxel’s network attached storage endpoints - CVE-2024-29973, CVE-2024-29972 and CVE-2024-29974. All three have a severity score of 9.8 (critical), and were found affecting NAS326 (running version V5.21(AAZF.16)C0 and earlier) and NAS542 (running versions V5.21(ABAG.13)C0 and earlier).  Fast-forward a few months, and now threat actors have started targeting the vulnerable endpoints. A botnet is essentially ...

ASMedia recently demonstrated its USB4 v2 physical layer (PHY) chips at Computex 2024, which will allow external SSDs to reach speeds of up to 15GBps, potentially matching the performance of internal drives. The USB4 Version 2.0 specification, released by the USB Implementers Forum in October 2022, introduces several advancements over the previous version.  It incorporates the new PAM3 signal encoding format, which extends the USB4 bandwidth from 40Gbps to 80Gbps for peer-to-peer connections and allows for asymmetric speeds of 120Gbps/40Gbps. FPGA-based USB4 Dock ASMedia's presentation at Computex, titled "Incredible Speed, Exceeding the Limit," covered both USB4 and PCIe Gen5 technologies. The USB4 v2 presentation showed 80Gbps and 120Gbps physical layers, which are capable of dramatically improving the speed at which large data files and high-resolution videos can be transferred. USB4's backward compatibility also ensures seamless integration with existing USB...

While everyone anxiously awaits the official Amazon Prime Day date (although it might have just been accidentally leaked ), Walmart is getting in on the action by announcing it's launching a huge rival sale, "Walmart Deals." The Walmart Deals sale will begin on Monday, July 8, at 5 PM ET and last until Thursday, July 11, at Midnight, and Walmart Plus members will get early access starting at Noon ET. Walmart's press release claims it will be the retailer's largest savings event ever, with deals on best-selling items, including tech gadgets, home items, toys, travel gear, and back-to-school must-haves. While Amazon isn't mentioned, based on years past, we know that Walmart always launches a July summer sale to try and take a piece of the Prime Day pie. Walmart is trying to compete with the retail giant by offering similar or even better deals and exclusive offers. Unlike Amazon, Walmart has given us a preview of the bargains at its July sale, and I...

The wait is finally over for Sweet Home fans, as Netflix has dropped a teaser trailer for the final season of the beloved K-drama. Thankfully, it’s a much shorter wait for the next season this time around, following on from the torturous three-year wait between the first two seasons. Sweet Home fans have followed the show’s survivors from the apartment complex Green Home since 2020. This post-apocalyptic environment where horrific monsters started appearing, presenting a strange otherworldly threat, sets the stage for protagonist Hyun-su, who soon realises he can transform into a monster at will, changing the course of his life.  Now though, it’s the ultimate showdown between man and monster, and if the teaser trailer (see below) is anything to go by, we’ll start to see a lot more social politics coming into play as well as a bombshell about the monsters themselves. Sweet Home season three lands on Netflix on July 19 but if you’re itching for more K-drama in the meantime, t...

A new week means a new opportunity to solve Strands. But then again, every day brings that opportunity, so I'm just talking nonsense. My hints are more useful than this intro, honest! Want more word-based fun? Then check out my  Wordle today ,  NYT Connections today  and  Quordle today  pages for hints and answers for those games.  SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers. NYT Strands today (game #113) - hint #1 - today's theme What is the theme of today's NYT Strands? • Today's NYT Strands theme is… Fine print NYT Strands today (game #113) - hint #2 - clue words Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system. THING STRIP GEARS LETTER GREAT HANG NYT Strands today (game #113) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram? • Repeating design NYT Strands today (game #113) - hint #4 - spangram position What are two sides of the bo...

Gigabyte has launched its AI TOP 100E series of SSDs specifically designed for high-endurance tasks such as AI training.  The new SSDs are available in 1TB and 2TB capacities and come housed in a standard M.2 2280 form factor. What makes them stand out from the competition is their extraordinary endurance ratings. Gigabyte says the 2TB model offers up to 219,000 TBW (Terabytes Written), a figure that is significantly higher than you’d expect from typical consumer SSDs. The mean time between failure (MTBF) is rated as 1.6 million hours. AI TOP utility AI TOP 100E uses the PCIe 4.0x4, NVMe 1.4  interface, so it won’t win any performance races, especially not when compared to newer PCIe 5.0 drives, but it’s fast enough. The 1TB SSD offers sequential read speeds up to 7,200MB/s and write speeds up to 6,500MB/s, slightly outperforming the 2TB model (7000MB/s reads, 5900MB/s writes). So essentially, based on the figures it's provided, Gigabyte is saying the 2TB model can write...

Sunday is always a good day to play Strands, because in my house at least there's more of a lazy, do-nothing feel to things. If only all days could be like that, eh? Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy today's instalment very much. Hopefully your experience is different. Want more word-based fun? Then check out my  Wordle today ,  NYT Connections today  and  Quordle today  pages for hints and answers for those games.  SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers. NYT Strands today (game #112) - hint #1 - today's theme What is the theme of today's NYT Strands? • Today's NYT Strands theme is… Fine diners NYT Strands today (game #112) - hint #2 - clue words Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system. CHEEK LINK SOCK BATON CHAIR TOUCH NYT Strands today (game #112) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram? • Fast franchise NYT S...

Building on the pioneering work done at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Swedish startup Sinonus is looking to commercialize a new multifunctional carbon fiber composite that can function as a battery, with the hope its technology could potentially eliminate traditional battery packs in devices like laptops, electric vehicles, and aircraft. The carbon fiber creation provides structural strength while reducing weight and improving system performance by using the existing mass to store energy. This trick is achieved by using carbon fibers as electrodes in a battery cell, combined with a specially developed electrolyte, to create lightweight, strong constructions with integrated electrical storage. As reported in New Atlas , this journey first began over a decade ago when Volvo's research in collaboration with Chalmers University identified carbon fibers with optimal electrical conductivity and structural stiffness. In 2022, Chalmers Ventures spun off the project i...

The Apple Watch is a great way to track activity, but the Workout app also has a fun feature where you can earn colorful badges by completing special challenges. And as it happens, the tech giant has recently released a new limited-edition badge to commemorate the International Day of Yoga, which is on June 21.  The badge looks based on the lotus flower, complete with a pink center, orange petals, and the year “2024,” all adorned in gold. All you have to do to earn it is to record a 10-minute yoga workout on the wearable. According to Tom’s Guide , there aren’t any limitations on how you can earn it. For example, you could begin a hot yoga session where you perform the exercise in a heated room. If that isn’t your style, you can always go for a more relaxed and mindful yoga session or follow one of the many classes on Apple Fitness Plus .  It does not matter if you're a beginner, a seasoned veteran of yoga, or even what practice you choose. What matters most is you recor...

The European Union might be feeling a bit left out this September when Apple is expected to ship key Apple Intelligence and other updates in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. It's not that Apple doesn't want to bring its own brand of artificial intelligence to the European countries. Features like Math Notes in iPadOS, generative AI Genmojis, inline AI writing assistance, and generative image editing capabilities across multiple platforms wowed developers and excited iOS, iPadOS, and macOS customers when Apple unveiled them earlier this month at WWDC 2024 in California. At the time, it was understood that Apple Intelligence features would work in US English but most thought that was a language capabilities limitation and not one related to third-party entity's restrictions.  However, now we know that Apple probably won't roll out iPhone Mirroring, Share Play, Screen Sharing enhancements, and, most importantly, Apple Intelligence to European users this year. The...

Businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to back up and manage the growing volumes of data they produce. The introduction of generative AI has further complicated matters, significantly challenging traditional storage methods. 128TB SSDs have been teased for some time, with a number of companies talking up their future plans. Huawei, for example, announced it was working on a 128TB SSD , but that product will only be available as part of its Exabyte-capable OceanStor A800 range and isn’t expected to be made available until 2025. At CES 2024, Phison showcased a variety of SSDs and portable SSD controllers, including its X2 enterprise SSD platform . Although capacities for this “world’s best-in-class Enterprise SSD” topped out at 61.44TB, the version displayed at CES suggested a future capacity of up to 128TB. 128TB coming "soon" Phison revealed a little more of its plans at the end of May 2024 when it took the wraps off its Pascari X200 PCIe Gen5 Enterprise SSD r...