News

A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Tuesday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Tuesday, June 24 (game #478).

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Worth the splurge

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• DOOM
• SCONE
• MENU
• BEND
• FURY
• TILE

• Spangram has 11 letters

First side: top, 4th column

Last side: left, 7th row

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

The answers to today's Strands, game #479, are…

• WATCH
• HANDBAG
• JEWELRY
• PERFUME
• CONVERTIBLE
• SPANGRAM: LUXURY GOODS

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

Not much of a stretch today, with all the words hiding in plain sight with minimal twists. The biggest surprise was the very rare sight of a spangram that started at the top and ended at the side.

“Worth the splurge” immediately had me thinking about family vacations, which are nearly always worth spending your hard-earned cash on. Instead, after finding WATCH and HANDBAG it became obvious we were looking for the standard array of LUXURY GOODS.

The thing all the items we were searching for today have in common is that they are all non essential and that cheaper versions of all of them are readily available, although with the exception of PERFUME all can be justified as splurge-worthy as they do not depreciate at the same rate as those cheaper versions (that’s what we tell ourselves anyway).

How did you do today? Let me know in the comments below.

• FLAXSEED
• PROBIOTIC
• CALCIUM
• ZINC
• MAGNESIUM
• SPANGRAM: SUPPLEMENTS

Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

Over the last year, threat actors have upped the ante with their plots to disrupt vital business and public services – and they have had increasingly successful outcomes. In fact, the UK government estimates that some of the most disruptive breaches cost businesses, of any size, an average of approximately £1,205. When looking at medium and large enterprises, this cost increases to approximately £10,830.

The UK government recognizes the increasing dependence of businesses and organizations on digital technologies, which are vulnerable to constantly evolving cyberattacks. To address this, it is investing £2.6 billion in the National Cyber Strategy to enhance and protect the UK’s online presence.

Central to this effort is promoting ‘cyber resilience’ – organizations' ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from cyberattacks and security breaches. This resilience is fundamental to operational continuity, business growth and the overall health of the UK economy.

Considering there were almost 9 million DDoS attacks globally in the second half of 2024, per NETSCOUT’s latest Threat Intelligence Report, the government’s greater focus on building cyber resilience is much needed. While the number of DDoS attacks across 2H2024 increased by more than 12 percent from the first half of the year, attacks are also more sophisticated than ever before.

For instance, application programming interfaces (APIs) paired with automation allows threat actors to carry out multitarget DDoS campaigns with minimal supervision, significantly increasing their attack efficiency.

Additionally, advanced techniques such as carpet-bombing, IPv6 abuse, internet service provider (ISP) masking and geo-spoofing expand attack reach for threat actors, allowing them to target victims regardless of their location, and bypass defenses.

The combination of increased frequency and sophistication of attacks increases the risk to businesses of being attacked. As has been seen from countless highly publicized incidents – such as the sophisticated cyberattack on Transport for London that disrupted services across the city in September – the devastation caused by DDoS attacks is significant.

When websites and business-critical applications are taken offline, the results are lost revenue, unhappy customers and irreparable damage to an organization's brand. The threat is continuing to grow so it is more important than ever for ISPs and enterprises to fully protect their networks and other critical infrastructure. To achieve this, organizations must look for more efficient and effective DDoS defense systems.

At a global level, there has been a noticeable increase in sophisticated DDoS hacktivism. Hacktivist groups have showcased their advanced technical capabilities, launching politically motivated cyberattacks against governments, infrastructure, and organizations around the world.

For example, NoName057(16) is the dominant actor behind geopolitical DDoS campaigns, focusing its efforts on government websites in the UK, Belgium, and Spain. In the last few years, this activity has signaled the beginning of a new era of cyber threats.

Geopolitical events drove massive attack spikes in 2024, with DDoS attacks increasingly becoming a weapon for political unrest. Threat actors have exploited periods of national vulnerability to amplify chaos and undermine confidence in institutions. For instance, Israel experienced a 2,844 percent surge in February tied to the conflict in Gaza, and Georgia saw a 1,489 percent increase in April leading up to the “Russia bill”.

These examples highlight the extent to which DDoS has become a go-to tool in sociopolitical conflicts – being deployed during elections, protests, and policy disputes – and how public sector and enterprise defenses need a rethink. Since attackers use a variety of techniques, ranging from custom-built tools to surprisingly simple methods, the need for robust and adaptable security measures is greater than ever.

The threat posed by DDoS attacks is a serious concern for businesses. Despite the prevalence of these attacks, the dangers often go unnoticed, with malicious traffic frequently mistaken for legitimate activity. Clever hackers can leave organizations vulnerable, even if they believe their defenses are robust.

To mitigate DDoS attacks, organizations should focus on reducing or terminating harmful traffic as soon as it is detected. Increasing network capacity is also crucial, as it helps absorb malicious traffic and prevents systems from being overwhelmed. Additionally, completely blocking anonymous and remote systems can make targets inaccessible to attackers, adding an extra layer of protection.

By implementing these strategies, organizations can enhance their visibility and resilience against DDoS attacks, navigating the complex landscape of cybersecurity with greater confidence.

The importance of keeping up with cyber threats cannot be overstated. Businesses should have a powerful DDoS protection system in place and regularly assess their network infrastructure. Just as organizations regularly prepare for fire drills by testing their alarms, proactively reassessing and regularly enhancing security measures is essential to stay afloat in the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape. With the shifting nature of DDoS threats, it is imperative for businesses to stay ahead of the curve, or they risk the severe consequences that come with being the victim of a DDoS attack.

After all, the devastating impact of cyberattacks across sectors has been seen globally with too many instances to count. Therefore, organizations need to be aware of current threat trends and prioritize their defense strategies. With comprehensive visibility, actionable threat intelligence and the right security team in place, businesses can build the awareness and resilience needed to navigate today’s threat landscape effectively.

We've featured the best online cybersecurity course.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

As a business founder in the tech space I am spending increasing amounts of time thinking about AI and its impact. Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the beginning of the end of humanity? Or is it our savior?

The truth almost certainly lies somewhere in the middle, but that said, I believe there are very clear reasons why businesses really should be worried about AI.

Amara’s Law states that the impact of technologies is overestimated in the short term but underestimated in the long term. Driverless cars, which have been coming out next year every year since 2016, is an example of overestimation.

Artificial neural networks, the key technology behind almost all AI systems you’ve heard of, might be good at playing Breakout and even predicting how proteins fold, but it cannot (yet) cope with the chaos of roads that, in my home village of Greenwich, were laid down by feet and hooves hundreds of years ago.

Amara’s Law works because researchers and practitioners, some driven by greed, others by fortune and others still by curiosity, but all of them nonetheless driven, find ways to improve the technology, find uses for it and eventually batter it into shape.

For business this is a worry for two reasons. On the one hand, if managers overestimate the readiness of a technology, then they tend to allocate too many resources to implementing it immediately at scale. Such quick ramp-ups are always followed by embarrassing climb downs.

On the other hand, if a technology is underestimated, like many did with the cloud and are doing right now with Artificial Intelligence, then all of a sudden they will find themselves playing catch up to their competitors.

The second reason to worry is that general purpose systems, like the content of Pandora’s box, cannot be put back once let out. For example, in the hands of Tim Berners-Lee, the personal computer and the Internet became the web. In the hands of a failed physicist in a garage in Seattle, the web gave birth to Amazon.com. What will artificial neural networks become in the hands of a hacker?

The box has been opened and we cannot put back the knowledge, the discoveries or the opportunities, good and bad, that opening the box created.

The third reason is the dramatic and continued effects on the labor market. Way before 2025 raised its head, McKinsey and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPCC) were worrying about job losses and what the latter called the upcoming ‘job apocalypse’.

As I see it the job apocalypse seems to be coming to pass. Announcements are made daily about governments opening up their data to private firms to train their artificial neural networks and of companies shedding their workforces and replacing them with AI ‘agents’. We all know talented people who have never previously been out of a job but now can’t find one.

Businesses have a triple challenge: rearranging their teams to work alongside AI agents, reassuring those left in the workforce, even though realistically there is nothing reassuring about what is happening, and doing so whilst the Damoclean Sword of Artificial Intelligence is suspended not by a horse’s hair but by something much less tenuous: the whims of a man in an office looking at a spreadsheet.

The fourth reason is probably the worst of all.

In the early part of the 2010s, Cambridge Analytica illegally collected the personal data of millions of Facebook users. From that data, psychographics, a portmanteau of psychology and demographics, were used to place targeted political advertisements into the social media streams of millions of people.

These political messages nudged enough people to vote for Donald Trump in the US presidential election of 2016. For their role in the Cambridge Analytica scandals, Facebook was fined $5 billion by the Federal Trade commission. By the time that happened, Donald Trump had already won the election.

Since 2016, sustained upheaval in the labor market continues to cause a remarkable amount of misery. In the UK, the latest reports state that 5.2 million children live in poverty. That’s 1 in every 3 children. In the United States, in 2023, the child poverty rate increased to 13.7 per cent.

Class tensions have always preceded the rise of populist, strong-men leaders. In 2016, when good old fashion propaganda collided with good old fashioned data theft, web technologies graduated from tools of commerce to… the ultimate tool of propaganda on planet Earth.

Artificial Intelligence, including the creation of deep fakes, is coming of age at the exact same moment when content moderation teams are being dismantled and strong man politics is on the rise. This new, unfettered age of disinformation has collided with people that are so desperately poor and devoid of hope that they will vote for anyone who promises to take down the elites who made them suffer so much. Politicians of all stripes sowed the wind. We all now have to reap the whirlwind.

Business leaders might not think they have the luxury of thinking about politics, yet if they work in technology they are simultaneously part of the problem and potentially the solution. Ignorance is no defense!

Artificial Intelligence is a tidal wave that is currently breaking, and breaking things, all around us. Because it’s already here, commentary on AI is a peculiar, often confusing and an almost always out of date, mixture of description and prediction.

There’s some consensus on the past but not much consensus on the future. AI is likely to become cheaper and easier to wield and exactly where it takes us will depend on the politics and ethics (or lack thereof) of the user.

And Amara’s Law tells us that AI is about to get really practical any moment. Welcome to the future.

We've featured the best business plan software.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro